e if it's natural and inevitable?"

Mavis looked at Miss Toombs wide-eyed.

"Does the fact of people agreeing to think it wrong make it really
wrong?" asked Miss Toombs, to add, "especially when the thinking what
you call 'doing wrong' is actuated by selfish motives."

"How can morality possibly be selfish?" inquired Mavis.

"It's never anything else. If it weren't selfish it wouldn't be of use;
if it weren't of use it couldn't go on existing."

"I'm afraid I don't follow you," declared Mavis, as she lit a cigarette.

"Wait. What would nearly all women do if you were mad enough to tell
them what you've done?"

"Drop on me."

"Why?"

"Because I've done wrong."

"Are women 'down' on men for 'getting round' girls, or forgery, or
anything else you like?"

Mavis was compelled to acknowledge her sex's lack of enthusiasm in the
condemnation of such malpractices.

"Then why would they hunt you down?" cried Miss Toombs triumphantly.
"Because, in doing as you've done, you've been a traitress to the
economic interests of our sex. Women have mutually agreed to make
marriage the price of their surrender to men. Girls who don't insist on
this price choke men off marrying, and that's why they're never
forgiven by other women."

"Is it you talking?"

"No, my dear Keeves; women, in this world, who look for marriage, have
to play up to men and persuade them they're worth the price of a man
losing his liberty."

"But fancy you talking like that!"

"If they're pretty, and play their cards properly, they're kept for
life. If they're like you, and don't get married, it's a bad look-out.
If they're pretty rotten, and have business instincts, they must make
hay while the sun shines to keep them when it doesn't."

"And you don't really think the worse of me?"

"I think the more. It's always the good girls who go wrong."

"That means that you will."

"I haven't the chance. When girls are plain, like me, men don't notice
them, and if they've no money of their own they have to earn a pittance
in Melkbridge boot factories."

"I can't believe it's you, even now."

"I don't mind giving myself away, since you've done the same to me. And
it's a relief to let off steam sometimes."

"And you really don't think the worse of me for having--having this?"

"I'd do the same myself to-morrow if I'd the chance and could afford to
keep it, and knew it wouldn't curse me when it grew up."

Mavis winced to recover herself and say: