Marie omitted, in the above letter, the details of the split with the two families. It seems that Terry had, on hearing about the "rumours," gone to his family, then near Chicago, and presented to them his philosophy of life; also his determination not to give up Marie, and not to marry her. It was then that the last rung was put in the ladder of his family crucifixion, as he would call it. It was then that his mother "basely deserted him;" and Terry left for good, rejecting the money offered him. "I passed them up," he said, scornfully, "and after spending the night in the lodging-house, I beat my way back to Chicago. I had been gone several days, and when I got back to the flat, where I went only to get Marie and clear out for God knows where, I found her gone, and no apparent way of finding her address. I went to see her mother, and had an awful scene with her. The violent woman was in hysterics and, after a long dispute, implored me to find her daughter. 'I'll find her,' I replied, 'for myself,' and left. "Marie afterwards told me that she and Gertrude had gone to see her mother, when I was in the country with my family, and that her mother had driven them away. Perhaps, the mother realised the change in the girl. Perhaps, too, she realised what must happen, if she drove her away. Yet she did drive her daughter away. From her own point of view, it was diabolical to do so. Her anger, her exasperation and her outraged desire to rule drove her to doing what she must have felt was the worst thing she could do. And she did it in the name of virtue! Perhaps it was for the best: I believe it was, but she did not and I cannot see where her spiritual salvation comes in." Terry finally found Marie--found her in the midst of a short experiment, in company with Gertrude, "in one of the social extremes,"--to be plain, leading the life of a prostitute. I ask the reader to pause here and reflect. Pause, before you conclude that this book is an indecent and immoral book. Reflect before you conclude that this woman is an immoral woman. I am engaged in telling a plain tale in such a way that certain social conditions and certain social considerations and individual truths may be illustrated thereby. Consequently, I shall not pause, though I ask the reader to do so, in order to point a moral in any extended way. In return for the readers' courtesy and tolerance, I will here reassuringly assert that there will be found in these pages no detailed description of Marie's life during her few months of prostitution; and nothing whatever, from cover to cover, of anything that in my judgment is either immoral or indecent.