wner of the agency
shows her how miserable the pay would be for any decent evening work,
and how easily she can earn all the money she needs for her mother if
she is willing to be paid by men. At first she refuses with pathos,
but under the suggestive pressure of luring arguments she slowly
weakens, and finally consents to exchange her street gown for a
fantastic costume of half-nakedness. The feelings of the audience are
saved by the detective who breaks in at the decisive moment, but the
arguments of the advocates of sexual education cannot possibly be
saved after that voluntary yielding. Sylvia knows what she has to
expect, and no more intense perusal of literature on the subject of
prostitution would have changed her mind. What else in the world could
have helped her in such an hour but a still stronger feeling of
instinctive repugnance? If Sylvia was actually to put her fate on a
mere calculation, with a full knowledge of all the sociological facts
involved, she probably reasoned wrongly in dealing with this
particular employment agency, but was on the whole not so wrong in
deciding that a frivolous life would be the most reasonable way out of
her financial difficulties, as her sexual education would include, of
course, a sufficient knowledge of all which is needed to avoid
conception and infection. She would therefore know that after a little
while of serving the lust of men she would be just as intact and just
as attractive. If society has the wish to force Sylvia to a decision
in the opposite direction, only one way is open: to make the belief in
the sacred value of virtue so deep and powerful that any mere
reasoning and calculation loses its strength. But that is possible
only through an education which relies on the instinctive respect and
mystical belief. Only a policy of silence could have saved Sylvia,
because that alone would have implanted in her mind an ineffable idea
of unknown horrors which would await her when she broke the sacred
ring of chastity.

The climax of public discussions was reached when America had its
season of Brieux' "Damaged Goods." Its topic is entirely different, as
it deals exclusively with the spreading of contagious diseases and the
prevention of their destructive influence on the family. Yet the doubt
whether such a dramatized medical lesson belongs on the metropolitan
stage has here exactly the same justification. Nevertheless, it brings
its new set of issues. Brieux' play does