find her daughter. 'I'll find her,' I
replied, 'for myself,' and left.

"Marie afterwards told me that she and Gertrude had gone to see her
mother, when I was in the country with my family, and that her mother
had driven them away. Perhaps, the mother realised the change in the
girl. Perhaps, too, she realised what must happen, if she drove her
away. Yet she did drive her daughter away. From her own point of view,
it was diabolical to do so. Her anger, her exasperation and her outraged
desire to rule drove her to doing what she must have felt was the worst
thing she could do. And she did it in the name of virtue! Perhaps it was
for the best: I believe it was, but she did not and I cannot see where
her spiritual salvation comes in."

Terry finally found Marie--found her in the midst of a short experiment,
in company with Gertrude, "in one of the social extremes,"--to be plain,
leading the life of a prostitute.

I ask the reader to pause here and reflect. Pause, before you conclude
that this book is an indecent and immoral book. Reflect before you
conclude that this woman is an immoral woman. I am engaged in telling a
plain tale in such a way that certain social conditions and certain
social considerations and individual truths may be illustrated thereby.
Consequently, I shall not pause, though I ask the reader to do so, in
order to point a moral in any extended way. In return for the readers'
courtesy and tolerance, I will here reassuringly assert that there will
be found in these pages no detailed description of Marie's life during
her few months of prostitution; and nothing whatever, from cover to
cover, of anything that in my judgment is either immoral or indecent.

Well, Terry found her, and Terry did not try to "reform" her. But he
stood by her, and was more interested, more in love with her than ever.
In addition to his personal interest, he felt an even stronger social
interest in her. To live with a girl like that was unconscious
propaganda. This passion, as he calls it, was now more deeply stirred
than when he first met her. This deeply aroused his imagination and his
keen desire to see what the naked constitution of the soul is, after it
is stripped of all social prestige.

If Marie had been simply a low, commercial grafter, Terry, the idealist,
would not have been interested. But Terry knew that Marie cared nothing
whatever for money. He regarded her as a social victim and in addition a
vigorous and life