"I don't mean to wound you. You don't understand." Then
turning to the Rev. Mr. Brattle, she went on: "But I must insist that my
vote in the negative be recorded in the minutes of this meeting."

"May I inquire the cause of your--er--peculiar attitude?" asked the
clergyman.

"Do you think that fair, Dr. Brattle?"

"Possibly not fair, but perhaps our curiosity is pardonable." There was
suppressed sarcasm in his retort.

"In your little speech of introduction, my dear doctor," said the girl,
"you advanced the suggestion that this meeting might evolve some theory
that would rid society of the social evil. The great trouble with this
report is that it is all theory. I have no quarrel with the facts that
Mr. Carp has given us, except that they are old--'world old,' as I think
you said. Weeks have been spent on this investigation and yet there is
not one word--not a single word--that answers the appeal going up in this
city day after day from thousands of unfortunate women. We sit here,
after weeks of investigation, and listen to a homily. The time is past in
Chicago for homilies. The question is: What are we going to do about it?
Helpless thousands are asking us that question and we answer it with a
treatise full of 'world-old' truth and full of 'theory.' Mr. Carp speaks
of the resorts on Dunkirk street being 'questionable'--"

"They are questionable," defended Mr. Carp stoutly.

"Questionable, Mr. Carp," replied Mary, "is a gentle word. These resorts
are a shrieking infamy. They are markets in which young girls are sold
like cattle."

"How do you know that?" demanded Grove Evans, almost rudely. He felt his
club appointment slipping away from him and the poker game owed him two
hundred dollars.

Mary looked from her aunt to her uncle.

"I know," she replied, "because I have been there. I know because I
myself bought four girls there!"

The company gasped its surprise.

"I told them I was 'in the business' in Seattle," the speaker continued.
"I told them I wanted to buy. I asked for four girls--four young girls.
They sold me four for one hundred dollars each."

There was a silence for a long moment. It was broken by Marvin Lattimer.

"Impossible!" he exclaimed.

Mary looked at him sadly. "There is one fact more impossible than that,
Mr. Lattimer," she said. "It is that men of the world like you--men who,
above all others, should make it their business to know these
things,--cry out 'Impossible!' when such a f