aren't morals closely connected with sanitation?" Beth said. "And
why, if sanitation is your business, do you take no radical measures
with regard to this horrible disease? Why do you not have it reported,
never mind who gets it, as scarlet fever, smallpox, and other
diseases--all less disastrous to the general health of the
community--are reported?"

Dan shrugged his shoulders. "It's a deuced awkward thing for a man to
be suspected of disease. It's a stigma, and might spoil his prospects.
Women are so cursedly prying nowadays. They've got wind of its being
incurable, and many a one won't marry a man if a suspicion of it
attaches to him."

"I see," said Beth. "The principles of the medical profession with
regard to sanitation when women are in question seem to be peculiar. I
wish to Heaven I had known them sooner." She hid her face in her
hands, and suddenly burst into tears.

Dan scowled. "Well, this is nice!" he exclaimed. "I have had a
devilish hard day's work, and come in cheery, as usual, to do my best
to make things pleasant for you, and this is the reception I get!
You're a nice pill, indeed!" He went off muttering into his
dressing-room and slammed the door.

When he appeared in the drawing-room, he found Beth and Bertha
chatting together as usual, and as, during the rest of the evening, he
could detect no difference in Beth's manner, he congratulated himself
that she was going to accept the position as inevitable, and say no
more about it. It was not Beth's way to return to a disagreeable
subject once it had been discussed, unless she meant to do something
in the matter, and Dan conceived that there was nothing to be done in
this instance. He considered that he was not the sort of man it was
safe for women to interfere with, and he guessed she knew it!

He was mistaken, however, when he supposed that she had let the
subject drop, and was going to resign herself to an invidious
position. She was merely letting it lapse until she understood it. It
was all as new to her as it was horrifying, and she required time to
study both sides of the question. Her own sense of justice was too
acute to let her accept at once the accusation that so-called
civilised men, who boast of their chivalrous protection of the "weaker
sex," had imposed upon women a special public degradation, while the
most abandoned and culpable of their own sex were not only allowed to
go unpunished, but to spread vice and disease where they lis