on without opening
his pay envelope, she goes to the theatre where the play is 'The Queen
of the Opium Fiends.' Sometimes she attends a dance of the Friendship
Circle, but as a rule she spends her nights at home reading the _Evening
Yell_, which tells her that beauty is often a fatal gift and that there
is danger in the first glass of champagne a young girl drinks. Am I
telling your story in the right way, Mamie?" asked Helen.

"Goodness, yes. You're awful kind, Helen," said Mamie.

"Thus far, Mamie has nothing to complain of," continued Helen. "But she
has read somewhere that the slaughter of the poor negroes in the Congo
and of the Chinese in Manchuria, and of the Zulus in Natal, and of the
Moros in the Philippines, arises from the necessity under which the
civilised nations labour to find foreign markets for their increasing
output of cotton goods, brass jewelry, and coloured beads. Now the
members of Mamie's union are engaged in producing precisely those
commodities, and they have come to feel in consequence, that they are
directly responsible for the innocent blood that is being shed in
various parts of the world. It cannot be their employers who are at
fault, because the press and the clergy are unanimous in declaring that
the heads of our great industries are the benefactors of humankind. That
is why the girls protest. They are quite content with their own fate,
but they cannot bear the entire responsibility for the march of
civilisation. Mamie tells me that she cannot sleep of nights for
thinking of the poor little Moorish babies whose mothers were killed by
the French guns. That is the position taken by your union, isn't it,
Mamie?"

Mamie giggled, went through a final contortion of ill-ease and returned
to her place, in the half-circle. She was succeeded by a brown-haired
little maiden, who for some minutes had been showing a strained anxiety
to break into speech.

"Please, Helen," she entreated, "may I say something?"

"Of course, dear," said Helen.

The little maid bowed to the mayor. "Please, sir," she said, "my papa
was thirty-eight years of age when he married mamma. He was an old
bachelor. He was not anxious to be married, but they put a tax on him
because they were afraid of depopulation. And he loves me very dearly.
But sometimes when he thinks of his old freedom he looks so sadly at me.
I feel very sorry for him then. I don't want him to be unhappy on my
account----"

She withdrew and Helen s