hardest. If she often regards both alike as devils, who shall blame
her! Those who share her sin leave her to face alone the suffering
that follows. For them society has a place even when their habits are
known. For her it has no place except a shameful one. Of real love, of
motherhood, or of family life she may know nothing. Even of normal
human relations she remains often ignorant.

He in whom we profess to have seen God was ready to forgive and willing
to love such women. We hold it wrong to forgive and impossible to love.

For a few short years in early youth she may have money in plenty, and
then slowly she begins to sink. Her health becomes sapped. Often
loathsome disease makes her a victim. As the shadows begin to gather
she will often turn to drink that for an hour she may recover the
delusion of well-being. Slowly but certainly the morass drags her down.
Often she does not reach thirty. If she lives it is to face a state in
which, toothless, wrinkled, and obscene, she is seen only by those who
visit the murkiest parts of our cities. She dies unmoored and unloved,
and is hurried into an unknown grave.

And she exists because men say they _must_ indulge their passions and
women believe it. She is the incarnation not of her own but of
society's shame. She is the scapegoat for thousands who live on in
careless comfort. Every man who touches her pushes her farther down,
and our hollow pretence of social morality is built upon her quivering
body.

Will you men who read this please think about her! Think till you are
horrified, disgusted, and ashamed. Think till you realize this
unthinkable thing. And then remember that she exists only because of