ad frequent quarrels. As the result of one of
them, Marie went off with Terry to his family flat, where he was living
alone at the time--to "have a fish dinner," telling the relenting Katie
that she would return in the evening. But she stayed there with Terry
all that night, for the first time. In the morning Katie turned up
bright and early, burst into the flat, and reproached Terry so bitterly
that they almost came to blows. But when Marie took Terry's side, Katie,
terribly disappointed and hurt, yet made up her mind that it was
inevitable; and Terry and Marie began to live together.

How did Marie feel about all this? What was her condition at the time,
and her attitude toward this strange man, so different from every other
she had met? In a long letter to me she has given an account of it all.

"I wrote you about my adventure with the club man. Well that was only a
single instance of what finally became frequent with me. I had grown so
fearfully tired of the life I was leading in domestic service that the
only problem for me was how to get away from it all. For a time, I had
thought I could get away only by marriage. I was ready to marry anybody
who offered me food and shelter, and I had even thought of prostitution
as a means of escape from domestic drudgery. I had not the slightest
idea of what prostitution in its accepted sense meant. I knew in a vague
way that women sold their bodies to men for money, that they lived
luxurious lives, went to theatres and balls, wore beautiful gowns and
seemed to be gay and happy. I was willing to marry any man who offered
me a home, without the least suspicion that in that way, too, I should
prostitute myself. But no one at that time offered me this means of
escape, so I was quite ready to take the only other way, as I thought,
left to me.

"About this time I met an old girl-friend whom I had not seen for
several years; she was a domestic servant, too, but was in advance of me
in her recklessness. When I met her again she was in the mood to lose
all the little virtue left to her. She was quite willing to sell
herself: she had done enough for love, she said, marriage was now an
impossibility, and she might as well realise on her commercial value. To
these ideas I agreed, and we arranged to meet in two weeks from that day
and try an experiment. Meanwhile she was to go back to her home, get her
belongings, and tell her parents she had secured a place as a
servant-girl in Chicago.