own around her heart and have
become precious to her! Tell me, are those pure women who willingly
give their souls and their bodies in marriage to men who have sinned
and who will sin again? They do it without disguise, without shame,
for position, or for freedom, or for money! yet there are other women
whom they call courtesans, and from whose touch they snatch away the
hem of their skirts in horror! Oh, it is terrible! There can be no
corruption worse than this in hell!"

"Yours has been the common disappointment of all reformers," he said
gravely. "Gratitude is the rarest tribute the world ever offers to
those who have laboured to cleanse it. When you are a little older you
will have learnt your lesson. But it is always very hard to learn....
Tell me about to-night!"

She raised her head a little. A faint spot of colour stained her
cheek.

"There was one woman who praised me, who came to see me, and sent me
cards to go to her house. To-night I went. Foolishly I had hoped a
good deal from it! I did not like Lady Truton herself, but I hoped
that I should meet other women there who would be different! It was a
new experience to me to be going amongst my own sex. I was like a
child going to her first party. I was quite excited, almost nervous. I
had a little dream,--there would be some women there--one would be
enough--with whom I might be friends, and it would make life very
different to me to have even one woman friend. But they were all
horrid. They were vulgar, and one woman, she took me on one side and
praised my book. She agreed, she said, with every word in it! She had
found out that her husband had a mistress,--some chorus-girl,--and she
was repaying him in his own coin. She too had a lover--and for every
infidelity of his she was repaying him in this manner. She dared to
assume that I--I should approve of her conduct; she asked me to go and
see her! My God! it was hideous."

Matravers laid his hand upon hers, and leaned forward in his chair.

"Lady Truton's was the very worst house you could have gone to," he
said gently. "You must not be too discouraged all at once. The women
of her set, thank God, are not in the least typical Englishwomen.
They are fast and silly,--a few, I am afraid, worse. They make use
of the free discussions in these days of the relations between our
sexes, to excuse grotesque extravagances in dress and habits which
society ought never to pardon. Do not let their judgments or their