"It's hard to find words for it," she went on at last. "But I want you to know that I've been happier these weeks than I ever dreamed any one could be. This--" their vocabulary _à deux_ had many lacunae--"It's been so different from what I expected. It isn't that I was afraid--only I was a little. I didn't think love would be like this. You see I hate to darn my own stockings--but I really enjoy darning yours. I guess that's inherently feminine. No service is really unpleasant when it's for the one we love. And I was ready to do any service for you--gladly. Can you understand what I'm trying to say? Well. It's been a surprise--a dizzying, joyous surprise. It isn't a service at all. It's--" Once more words failed her. "You remember one night you asked me if I really loved you. I thought I did then. I didn't know what I was talking about. But now--now that I know"--she brushed the foolish tears out of her eyes and reached up her hand to his cheek--"I really, really love you. "Please. I don't want to be loved just now. I want to talk. "What bothers me," she went on in a moment, "is that I was ignorant. Why? Why didn't I know about this? I knew about the physiology of love, but that is only so very little of it. I'd read Forel; everybody says that is the best book on sex. But that did not tell me. I've talked with a few women. They either haven't said anything or they've been hostile--they spoke of the 'burden of sex' or of 'woman's sacrifice to man.' Why did not some one tell me the truth, so that I would not have been dismayed? So I might have been altogether glad? It seems so evident that ignorance is bad--and dangerous." "Of course it's dangerous," he replied. "There is only one thing more dangerous than ignorance--that's misinformation. That's where young men suffer. I've thought about this a lot, Yetta. It's hideous. Long before any one ever told me anything that was true, I had learned so much that was false. Men learn their first lessons of sex from women--poor, pallid women who have never known what love was. It doesn't matter whether a boy goes to them or not. Indirectly, if not directly, he learns their lore. The older boys who tell him about women have learned from them. "Prostitution is the blackest blot on this civilization we Socialists are trying to overthrow. In spite of the hypocrisy which tries to ignore its existence it is just as fundamental an institution as the churches and armies. Present society could not exist without these women any more than it could without its warships and worships. It's hideous in so many ways. But the point we don't hear about so often is that these women, whom we despise and consistently degrade, are the teachers who instruct our youth in this business of sex. It is the holiest thing in life. Its priestesses are the most polluted class in the community. Not that I blame them. They are victims. But they get their revenge--a horrible revenge.