r visit
on a slip of paper we were taken up in a lift to another office with an
open safe, where a man in a kind of uniform (called a Commissioner) was
signing letters and cheques.

The Commissioner was at first very courteous, especially to me, and I
had an uncomfortable feeling that he was mistaking me for something
quite other than I was until Mildred explained our errand, and then his
manner changed painfully.

"What you ask is against all our regulations," he said. "Secrecy implies
something to hide, and we neither hide anything nor permit anything to
be hidden. In fact our system requires that we should not only help the
woman, but punish the man by making him realise his legal, moral, and
religious liability for his wrong-doing. Naturally we can only do this
by help of the girl, and if she does not tell us at the outset who and
what the partner of her sin has been and where he is to be found. . . ."

I was choking with shame and indignation, and rising to my feet I said
to Mildred:

"Let us go, please."

"Ah, yes, I know," said the Commissioner, with a superior smile, "I have
seen all this before. The girl nearly always tries to shield the guilty
man. But why should she? It may seem generous, but it is really wicked.
It is a direct means of increasing immorality. The girl who protects the
author of her downfall is really promoting the ruin of another woman,
and if. . . ."

Thinking of Martin I wanted to strike the smug Pharisee in the face, and
in order to conquer that unwomanly impulse I hurried out of the office,
and into the street, leaving poor Mildred to follow me.

Our last call was at the home of a private society in a little brick
house that seemed to lean against the wall of a large lying-in hospital
in the West End of London.

At the moment of our arrival the Matron was presiding in the
drawing-room over a meeting of a Missionary League for the Conversion of
the Jews, so we were taken through a narrow lobby into a little
back-parlour which overlooked, through a glass screen, a large
apartment, wherein a number of young women, who had the appearance of
dressmakers, ladies' maids, and governesses, were sewing tiny pieces of
linen and flannel that were obviously baby-clothes.

There were no carpets on the floors and the house had a slight smell of
carbolic. The tick-tick of sewing machines on the other side of the
screen mingled with the deadened sound of the clapping of hands in the
room overh