, in spite of her,
part of her daily surroundings and she cannot escape its
contaminating, demoralizing influence.

Virginia was no fool. Now nearly nineteen, she knew everything about
life which an intelligent girl should know. What puzzled her most was
to determine her own mental attitude towards marriage. Not yet having
met a man for whom she could feel any especial regard, the idea of
forming with any man as close an association as marriage would mean
was repellent to her. The intimate relation the marital tie
pre-supposes frightened and appalled her as it has done many times
before thousands of passionless, strongly intellectual women who,
bringing cold analysis to bear on the sexual instinct, rebel at the
subordinate, humiliating role which the weaker sex is called upon to
play in Nature's vast and wonderfully complex scheme.

Not that she was passionless or lacking in temperament. The girl in
"whose veins ran lightning" could hardly be accused of indifference to
the opposite sex. She liked several young men, but there was not one
of them whom she could bring herself to think of in the light of a
husband. Girls often married for other than sentimental reasons. Of
that she was well aware. Self-interest was at the bottom of most
marriages. Cupid, guileless as he seems, is often a shrewd,
calculating little gnome in disguise. If a girl has no means, no
friends, no way of earning a living, what is going to become of her
unless she seeks refuge in marriage? Her first instinct is to find a
husband, a man sufficiently well off to support both. There was, of
course, only one word with which to brand that sort of thing. It was a
legalized form of prostitution, an approved system of cohabitation
which must be horrible and detestable to any girl of decent instincts,
no matter which way she looked at it, and yet it was a state of white
slavery which society fully condoned and ever approved. Hundreds of
virtuous girls thus sold themselves--to the highest bidder. The slums
had no monopoly of the white slave traffic; it flourished equally well
on fashionable Fifth Avenue, where its countless victims, for the
honor of the system, managed to conceal their tears from the world.
What did bridge-playing mothers care about their daughters' happiness
so long as they were able to procure for them rich men who could give
them fine houses, servants, and automobiles? It was all hideous and
ghastly, when viewed thus sanely, and Virginia s