e; they were easier to break in if they
had never done anything else.

There was not the shadow of a doubt that they were being "broken in." So
clearly was that demonstrated that Katie wondered what there would be
left for them to be broken in to after they had been thoroughly broken in
to that. Walking slowly behind them, looking at every girl as a possible
Ann, she wondered what they would have left for a Something Somewhere.
She remembered the woman who wore the white furs saying it "got on her
nerves" and wondered what kind of nerves they would be it wouldn't "get
on." The thing itself seemed a mammoth nervous system, feeding on other
nervous systems, lesser sacrificed to greater.

Her fancy reached out to all the things that at that instant were going
through those cords. Plans were being made for dinner, for motoring that
evening, for many pleasant, restful things. Many little red lights, with
many possible invitations, were insistently dancing before tired eyes
just then. They seemed endless--those demands of life--demands of life
before which other demands of life were slowly going down.

She and Mann were alone for the minute. "And yet," she turned to him,
after following his glance to a girl's tense, white face, "what can they
do? The company, I mean. One must be fair. They pay better than most
things pay, seem more interested in the girls. What more can we ask?"

"Well, what would you think," he suggested, "of 'asking' for a system
more interested in conserving nervous systems than in producing
millionaires?

"Why, yes," he added, "in view of the fact that it has to make a few men
rich, perhaps they are doing all they can. I don't doubt that they think
they are. But if this were a thing that didn't have to produce
wealth--then it wouldn't need to endanger health. Don't you think that in
this nerve-blighting work four or five hours, instead of eight, would be
a pretty good day's work for girls just out of short clothes?"

"It would seem so," sighed Katie, as she left the room filled with girls
answering calls--girls looking too worn to respond to any "call" life
might have for them.

Though when, a little later, they stood in the doorway watching a long
line of them passing out into the street it was amazing how ready and how
eager they seemed for what life had to offer them. They all looked tired,
but many appeared happy--determined that all of life should not be going
over the wire. It seemed to Katie