ithout any sort of a pass or countersign. That's what it's coming
to. A _sham trade_, like hundreds of other sham trades; and the
shammer and the shamefuller, because women demean themselves to it.
I can't bear to see women changing so, away from themselves. We
shan't get them back again, this generation. The _homes_ are going.
Young men of these days have got to lose their wives--that they
ought to have--and their homes that they looked forward to, such as
their mothers made. It's hard upon them; it takes away their hopes
and their motives; it's as bad for them as for the women. It's the
abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. There's no end
to the mischief; but it works first and worst with exactly girls of
your class--_our_ class, Marion. Girls that are all upset out of
their natural places, and not really fit for the new things they
undertake to do. As I said,--how long will it last? How long will
the Mr. Hamilton Leverings put you forward and find chances for you?
Just as long as you are young and pretty and new. And then, what
have you got left? What are you going to turn round to?"

Sunderline stopped. The color flushed up in his face. He had spoken
faster and freer and longer than he had thought of; the feeling that
he had in him about this thing, and the interest he had in Marion
Kent, all rushed to words together, so that he almost forgot that
Marion Kent in bodily presence stood listening before him, he was
dealing so much more with his abstract thought of her, and his
notion of real womanhood.

But Marion Kent did stand there. She flushed up too, when he said,
"We are going to lose our wives by it." What did he mean? Would he
lose anything, if she took to this that she thought of, and went
abroad into the world, and before it? Why didn't he say so, then?
Why didn't he give her the choice?

But what difference need it make, in any such way? Why shouldn't a
girl be doing her part beforehand, as a man does? He was getting
ahead in his trade, and saving money. By and by, he would think he
had got enough, and then he would ask somebody to be his wife. What
should the wife have been doing in the mean time--before she was
sure that she should ever be a wife? Why shouldn't she look out for
herself?

She said so.

"I don't see exactly, Mr. Sunderline."

She called him "Mr. Sunderline," though she remembered very well
that in the earnestness of his talk he had called her "Marion." They
had grown