e them dragging
the bed of the streets for the bodies they can find. It is the last
task which Nature sets them--bait to lure men from the theft of that
virtue in others which they can in no wise repay.

And this very virtue itself needs no little power of subtle
comprehension to understand; for intrinsically it is a fixed quality
while outwardly it changes, just as the tide of custom ebbs or flows.
Intrinsically then, it is that quality in a woman which breeds
respect in men--respect, the lure of which is so often their own
vanity. And the pure, the chaste, the untouched woman, whether it
be vanity or not, is she whom men most venerate. Of these they make
mothers--for these alone they will live continently. And however
much love a man may bear in his heart for a woman whom some other
than himself has possessed, the knowledge of it will corrupt like
a poison in the blood though he forgive her a thousand times.

Such a woman, pure, chaste, and untouched, had been Sally Bishop.
But to one man alone can a woman be this, and then, only so long as
she remains with him. Once he has cast her off, when once she is
discarded, she becomes to all who know her, a woman of easy virtue,
prey to the first hungry hands that are ready to claim her. This,
in an age when the binding sacrament of matrimony is being held up
to ridicule both in theory and in practice, is perhaps the only
reasonable argument that can be utilized in its defence. It is surely
not pedantic to hope that the purity of some women is still essential
for the race, and it is surely not illogical to suppose that marriage
is the means, in such cases as that of Sally Bishop, to this humble
end.

Pure, certainly, she had been, even in the eyes of such a man as
Devenish; but in the light of a discarded mistress, all her virtue
vanished. Innate in the mind of the worst of men is the timid
hesitation before he brands a virtuous woman; but when once he knows
that she has fallen, conscience lifts, like a feather on the breeze.
With a light heart, he reaps the harvest of tares which some other
than himself must be blamed for sowing, and with a light heart he
goes his way, immune to remorse.

This then is the Tragedy which, like some insect in the heart of the
rose, had eaten its way into the romance of Sally Bishop.

For three days after Traill had left her, she broke under the flood
of her despair. For those three days she did not move out of her rooms,
taking just what