e use
of chastity, rather than to acquire it for itself. And, after all,
what is it in itself, when the gilt of its glamour is stripped, like
tinsel, from the fairy's pantomimic wand?

There is, when everything has been said, only one value in chastity
in its ideal sense, so long as we are tied to these conditions of
human instinct, and that is in the value that it brings to women.
Without it, a woman may be the essence of fascination; she may be
the completeness of attraction, but for the need of the race she is
undesirable. Without chastity, a woman may be most things to a man,
but she cannot be a mother to his child.

Amongst those girls, then, whose desire in life it is to marry,
conforming in all ways to the authority of convention, chastity has
been taught from the cradle--taught as a means to an end. It is mostly,
if not altogether, in the lower middle classes that you will find
chastity to be an end in itself. The destructive philosophy of
education has not swept out the gentler virtues from them. As yet
they have not come under the keen edge of its influence. For their
chastity, then, they are interesting; whereas the manufactured
virtue of the upper middle class is like the hothouse
strawberry--forced in May--a tempting fruit to lay upon a dish, but
tasteless, as is wool, between the teeth.

It is this virtue--this real quality, breeding self-respect--that
you will find in the mind of Sally Bishop. Here is no strategy of
movement, no well-considered campaign. She quickens her steps, and
her heart thumps within her, because that virtue, which is her
priceless possession, is in danger of being assailed. In the very
soul of her is the desire to escape. There are thousands of women
whom education has nursed who set the pace as well, whenever a man
starts in pursuit; but the course of their flight leads straight to
the altar and they run neither too fast, nor too slow, lest by any
chance the hunter should weary of the chase. But here you have none
of this. The woman is obeying instincts that Nature gave her with
her soul. Sally Bishop is pure--the chaste woman. Where men most look
for her, she is hard to find.

This journey from King Street to Piccadilly Circus was performed
every evening. In Piccadilly she found the 'bus that took her to
Hammersmith. It was a pleasurable little journey; she looked forward
to it. It amused her to dally on the way, stopping to look in the
shop windows. The bright lights lifted