"Thank you, Miss Randall," he began gravely, "I--I--"

"You were saying that you were moved by a feeling of delicacy," prompted the girl.

"Thank you, Miss Randall." Mr. Carp bowed. "I--er--am experiencing a feeling of embarra.s.sment because this is a meeting of both s.e.xes and the subject is one which, only recently, has been discussed in mixed company.

When one so young as yourself is present--"

"Oh," replied the girl, a shade of amus.e.m.e.nt in her voice, "please don't let my youth interfere with our deliberations. I a.s.sure you that, young as I may appear to be, I am quite familiar with the matter we have under consideration."

This remarkable declaration caused something of a real sensation. Mrs.

Sumnet-Ives mentally put the speaker down as "a pert little chit." Grove Evans was amused, for he disliked Carp. Mrs. Randall catalogued it as another ebullition of Mary's queerness; even her uncle, despite an affection that accepted everything Mary did as right and proper, felt himself a little shocked. As for Miss Laforth, she favored Miss Randall with a long, inventorying inspection. Here, she reflected, might be a future political rival.

Mr. Carp began to read slowly with here and there a pause to enable his audience to catch a subtle turn of phrase or the flowing rhythm of his periods. He read while the light grew fainter and the fire glowed more brightly, read until Lucas Randall leaned across the table and switched on the light in the great bra.s.s lamp.

Mary Randall, deep in her easy chair beside the window and lulled by the soporific monotone of Mr. Carp's voice, saw the afternoon darken into dusk and the dusk deepen into night. Before her half-closed eyes the city, slowly but purposefully, began to throw off the habiliments of day and don the tinsel of evening. One by one, from far down the s.p.a.cious avenue, the street lamps glowed into bulbs of color which the wet asphalt, like a winding black mirror, caught up and flung against the polished finishings of a swift and silent train of automobiles and the windows of the nearby mansions.

And still Wyat Carp read on and on, skirting the outer circle of forbidden subjects, leading up to closed doors he made no attempt to open, expatiating voluminously on conditions that all the world knew, elucidating the obvious, ranging from one plat.i.tude to another--and avoiding the vital and concrete as though it were poisonous. And as Mr.

Carp read Mary became oppressed with his total futility.

Mrs. Ives risked a hasty glance at her jeweled wrist watch.

"Doesn't the man know it's nearly time to dine?" she wondered.

Grove Evans, with a dinner engagement at the club and a place bespoken in a quiet poker game afterward, squirmed in his chair and cursed Wyat Carp silently. Finally, with a last rhetorical flourish, Mr. Carp quite suddenly ended. He sat down amid a murmur of applause.

"Wonderful," exclaimed Mrs. Ives. She was agreeably astonished that Mr.

Carp should ever have finished.

"Very full, concise and to the point," was Miss Laforth's verdict.

"Great!" announced Grove Evans, really delighted, for he would be in time for dinner at the club after all.

The Rev. Thomas Brattle gazed about the circle with a bland smile. "I am glad," he said, "to have my judgment indorsed by such excellent critics."

Then, rapping gently on the table, he glanced about him. "A motion is in order before we adjourn, my friends," he stated, expectantly.

"I move Mr. Carp's report be adopted as it stands," said Marvin Lattimer breathlessly. He had waited patiently all afternoon to speak just those words. His business judgment, as applied to social affairs, had taught him the wisdom of getting into the record. He was only a recent confidant of this inner circle of All Souls and he aspired to remain where he was.

Besides, it would be something to tell the socially ambitious Mrs.

Lattimer when he got home. There was a second from Miss Laforth.

"You hear the motion," breathed the reverend chairman. "Those in favor will please say 'aye.'" As they all responded he beamed upon them. He turned with a deprecatory glance to Carp. "And as a matter of form, those contrary minded will please signify by saying 'no.'"

He waited a moment. Quite clearly and distinctly Mary Randall spoke:

"No!"

The tiny monosyllable seemed to echo and reecho through the high-ceiled room. There was a most embarra.s.sing silence.

"Mary," faltered Mrs. Randall.

Mary came over and pressed her hand against her aunt's shoulder. "Believe me," she said, "I don't mean to wound you. You don't understand." Then turning to the Rev. Mr. Brattle, she went on: "But I must insist that my vote in the negative be recorded in the minutes of this meeting."

"May I inquire the cause of your--er--peculiar att.i.tude?" asked the clergyman.

"Do you think that fair, Dr. Brattle?"

"Possibly not fair, but perhaps our curiosity is pardonable." There was suppressed sarcasm in his retort.

"In your little speech of introduction, my dear doctor," said the girl, "you advanced the suggestion that this meeting might evolve some theory that would rid society of the social evil. The great trouble with this report is that it is all theory. I have no quarrel with the facts that Mr. Carp has given us, except that they are old--'world old,' as I think you said. Weeks have been spent on this investigation and yet there is not one word--not a single word--that answers the appeal going up in this city day after day from thousands of unfortunate women. We sit here, after weeks of investigation, and listen to a homily. The time is past in Chicago for homilies. The question is: What are we going to do about it?

Helpless thousands are asking us that question and we answer it with a treatise full of 'world-old' truth and full of 'theory.' Mr. Carp speaks of the resorts on Dunkirk street being 'questionable'--"

"They are questionable," defended Mr. Carp stoutly.

"Questionable, Mr. Carp," replied Mary, "is a gentle word. These resorts are a shrieking infamy. They are markets in which young girls are sold like cattle."

"How do you know that?" demanded Grove Evans, almost rudely. He felt his club appointment slipping away from him and the poker game owed him two hundred dollars.

Mary looked from her aunt to her uncle.

"I know," she replied, "because I have been there. I know because I myself bought four girls there!"

The company gasped its surprise.

"I told them I was 'in the business' in Seattle," the speaker continued.

"I told them I wanted to buy. I asked for four girls--four young girls.

They sold me four for one hundred dollars each."

There was a silence for a long moment. It was broken by Marvin Lattimer.

"Impossible!" he exclaimed.

Mary looked at him sadly. "There is one fact more impossible than that, Mr. Lattimer," she said. "It is that men of the world like you--men who, above all others, should make it their business to know these things,--cry out 'Impossible!' when such a fact is exhibited before you in all its hideousness."

"You should have had the man who sold those girls arrested," blurted Grove Evans.

"I did," replied Mary quietly, "and _The Reporter_, in which you are a part owner, suppressed publication of the fact. I had the man arrested and Jim Edwards, the politician who holds the district in the hollow of his hand, prevented the case from going to trial. That man walks the streets of Chicago free and without bond."

The girl turned to Dr. Brattle again.

"Doctor," she said, "you are a clergyman. You are the shepherd of the flock. Are you, too, deaf to the appeal that goes up daily from the sinks of this city,--from hundreds of ruined girls? Do you, too, stand by while wolves rend the lambs? Do you deny the existence of the wolf?"

"We can only strive to educate these women, to teach them the error of their way," pleaded the shepherd.

"But, doctor, while you are educating one, the wolves are tearing down twenty. They 'educate,' too, and their facilities are better than yours."

The girl stopped breathlessly and, stooping swiftly, kissed her aunt.

There were tears in her eyes.

"Don't worry about me," she said.