onscious of their public
situation.

The young lawyer looked straight before him while the girl, swept on by
her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had
been injected into her young life.

"I don't see what men find about her to like--unless it is her eyes.
She's got beautiful eyes. But she's vulgar--ugh! The stories she
tells--right before men, too! She'd kill any one that got ahead of her,
that woman would! And yet she'll come into my room and cry and cry and
say: 'Don't take him away from me! Leave him to me.' Ugh! It makes me
sick." She stamped her foot, then added, irrelevantly: "She wears a wig,
too. I suppose that old fool of a judge thinks it's her own hair."

The lawyer sat in stony silence. His grave face was accusing in its set
expression, and she felt it and was spurred on to do still deeper
injustice to herself--an insane perversity.

"Not that I care a cent--I'm not jealous of her. I ain't so bad off for
company as she is. She can't take anybody away from me, but she must go
and break down my faith in the judge."

She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She looked out of the window
again, seeking control.

The "divorce colony" never appeared more sickening in its inner
corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could
see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering
eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest
addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those
already well known.

The girl turned suddenly to her companion.

"How do those people live out here on their farms?"

She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the
train go by.

"By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork."

"Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or
hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!"

He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for
the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?"

"At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to boarding
school. I learned a good deal more than you think."

"Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours,
speaking from experience."

"Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?"

"They work like the men, only more so."

"Do they have any new things?"

"Not very often, I'm afraid."

She sighed. After a pause she said:

"You were raised on