brought their treasures of gold and silver and jewels and
heaped them up under the pulpit of Savonarola in the market-places, so
hundreds of men and women of every social degree recognised the plain
fact that they could not be at the same time honestly rich and honestly
Christians, and so, instead of material treasure, they had sent their
cheques to Vane.

Before the year was over he found himself nominally the richest man in
the United Kingdom. He had more than five millions sterling at his
absolute disposal, almost countless thousands of pounds given up for
conscience' sake because he had said that honest Christians could not
own them; and he and Father Philip, Father Baldwin and Ernshaw, having
given many hours and days of anxious consideration to the very pressing
question as to which was the best way of disposing of this suddenly,
and, as they all confessed, unexpectedly acquired wealth, decided to
devote it to the extirpation, so far as was possible in England, of that
Cancer in Christianity which Christians of the canting sort call the
Social Evil.

As Jesus of Nazareth had said to the woman taken in adultery, "Go thou
and sin no more!" so the Missionary and his helpers said:

"You have sinned more through necessity than choice, and the Society
which denies you redemption is a greater sinner than you, since it
drives you into deeper sin. There is no hope for you here. Civilization
has no place for you, save the streets or the 'homes,' which are, if
anything, more degrading than the streets.

"Those who are willing to save themselves we will save so far as earthly
power can help you. We will give you homes where you will not be known,
where, perhaps, you may begin to lead a new life, where it may be that
you will become wives and mothers, as good as those who now, when they
pass you in the street, draw their skirts aside fearing lest they
should touch yours. And, if not that, at least we will save you from the
horrible necessity of keeping alive, by living a life of degradation."

The foregoing paragraphs are, to all intents and purposes, a precis of a
charter of release to the inhabitants of the twentieth century Christian
Inferno which was drawn up by Dora Russell the day before she yielded to
Ernshaw's year-long wooing, and consented to be his helpmeet as well as
his helper.

It was scattered broadcast in hundreds of thousands all over the
country. Storms of protest burst forth from all the citadels of
o