have children!" he exclaimed.

"Good Lord, man!" laughed the other. "Where do you keep yourself,
anyway?"

But Thyrsis was too much shaken to think of being ashamed. This was
a most appalling revelation to him--it opened quite a new vista of
life's possibilities.

"But why should they do such things?" he cried.

"They earn their living that way," said the other.

"But why _that_ way?"

"I don't know. They are that kind of women, I suppose."

And so Warner went on to expound to him the facts of prostitution,
and all the abysses of human depravity that lie thereabouts. And
incidentally the boy got a chance to ask his questions, and to get a
common-sense view of his perplexities. Also he got some
understanding of human nature, and of the world in which he lived.

Here was Warner, a man of twenty-four, and of a devout, if somewhat
dull and plodding conscientiousness; and the last eight or nine
years of his' life had been one torment because of the cravings of
lust. He had never committed an act of unchastity--or at least he
told Thyrsis that he had not. But he was never free from the
impulse, and he had no conception of the possibility of being free.
His desire was a purely brute one--untouched by any intellectual or