icle. I stared at
him, for a moment too absorbed in my inner terror to be very conscious
of him. When he repeated the question, I looked at him with a more
intelligent expression in my eyes, and he, seeing my condition, spoke to
me kindly and persuasively.

"'Tell me the truth,' he said, 'And I will help and advise you.' So I
told him the whole story, and he reassured me, saying, 'Don't be
afraid, little girl, I have no doubt your mother will forgive you if you
explain to her in the way you have to me. It is hard for children to
understand their parents. I know, for I have children of my own, and
sometimes they think me unkind when I am trying to do my best for them.'
He was kind, but he was firm, too, and said that if I did not write my
mother, he should do so himself. So I at last consented, and as a result
went back to the city: for my mother, my unfortunate, cruel mother,
wanted me for some strange reason, to be near her."

CHAPTER IV

_Adventures In Sex_

When Marie returned to her home, she found that her father had died. It
made little difference, practical or otherwise, to her or to her mother,
except to make her stay in the house less dangerous, though quite as
irksome, as formerly. Her mother had, of course, reproached her bitterly
for her conduct in running away, and had kept up her complaint so
constantly that Marie could hardly endure her home even for the night
and early morning. So for that reason, as well as for the need of making
her living, Marie went again into service, going quickly from one job to
another in the city.

And now there came for her a period of wildness, in the ordinary sense
of the word. It was not the simple joys of her Kenilworth experience.
She had returned to her mother's home in a kind of despair. It seemed
to her as if the innocent pleasures of life were not for her. She had
been torn away from her happiness and had been compelled to go back
to conditions she hated. Her passions were strong and her
seventeen-year-old senses were highly developed by premature work and
an irritating and ungenial home. So, in a kind of gloomy intensity,
she let herself go in the ordinary way of unguarded young girlhood.
She gave herself to a young fellow she met in the street one evening,
without joy but with deep seriousness. She did not even explain to him
that it was her first experience. She wanted nothing from him but the
passionate illusion of sex. And she parted from him without