tion or excuse. But with strength born of
bitter knowledge she begged, demanded, that I do something to make good
women understand that worlds like hers will never pass away if men
alone are left to rid earth of them. Ceaselessly I keep busy lest I
realize too clearly what such a message means. I shrink from it,
appalled at what it may imply. I am a coward. As great a coward as
the women whose unconcern I have of late been so condemning.

Yesterday Lillie went away. Mr. Guard took her to the mountains where
a woman he used to know in the days of his mission work will take care
of her. He is coming back to-morrow. The sense of comfort that his
coming means is beyond analysis or definition. Only once or twice in a
lifetime does one meet a man of David Guard's sort, and whatever my
mistakes, whatever my impulses and lack of judgment may lead me to do,
he will never be impatient with me. We have had several long and frank
and friendly talks since the day he brought Lillie in to Mrs. Mundy,
and if Scarborough Square did no more for me than to give me his
friendship I should be forever in its debt.

Early this morning I had a dream I have been trying all day to forget.
Through the first part of the night sleep had been impossible. The
haunting memory of Lillie's eyes could not be shut out, and the sound
of her voice made the stillness of the room unendurable. I tried to
read, to write, to do anything but think. I fought, resisted; refused
to face what I did not want to see, to listen to what I did not want to
hear; and not until the dawn of a new day did I fall asleep.

In my dream Lillie was in front of me, the bit of wall-flower in her
hands, and gaspingly she cried out that something should be done.

"It can never be made clean, the world we women live in. But there
should never be such worlds. Good women pretend they do not know.
They do not want to know!"

"But, Lillie"--I tried to hold her twisting, writhing hands. "There is
much that has been done. Some women do know, and homes and
institutions and societies--"

"Homes and institutions and societies!" She drew her hands away in
scornful gesture. "They are poultice and plaster things. They are for
surface sores, and the trouble is in the blood. To cure, to cleanse,
undo the evil of our world is not in human power. It's the root of the
tree that must be killed. You can cut off its top for a thousand years
and it will come back again. Women h