It would be easier for us to understand Yetta's outlook on life, if we too had stood on the very brink of that bottomless abyss; if we realized, as she had suddenly come to realize, how very narrow is the margin of safety, which even our greatest caution can give us. It did not seem to her that she was risking much in risking everything she had. Mabel Train, on the contrary, had joined the ranks of Social Revolt without any compulsion. She and her family were beneficiaries of the system to the overthrow of which she had dedicated her energy. It would have been very easy for her to sink into the smug complacency of the life to which she had been born and bred. Why should she not accept the conventional lies of our civilization as her mother, her sister, and her friends did? She had been given this strangely strong intellect which her professor had called masculine, and she could not help but recognize the "falsehoods." She had also been given a keen sense of ethics and a tremendous pride. She could not bear the thought of being "the kept woman" of Injustice. With all that is ordinarily called "good" at her command, she had voluntarily chosen a hard and cheerless life, a career which was largely thankless. Instead of cotillions she went to the balls of the Amalgamated Union of Skirt Finishers. She had given up a comfortable home for light-housekeeping in a flat. The hardest of all was that instead of being considered an ordinarily sane young woman, all the people of her old life thought her a crank and a fool. Yetta's situation was indeed different--less heroic but more tragic. And just in proportion as your own toothache hurts you more than your neighbor's, it was more vital. Her life seemed to her shameful, and as a price of shame it offered her nothing but a gradual rotting into barren uselessness. Her first effort to escape from the vicious rut into which she had fallen had led her to the brink of a greater shame, a surer disaster. Of all the people with whom life had brought her into contact, three seemed preëminently good: her father, Longman, and Mabel Train. They all loved Liberty. Once her eyes had been opened, Yetta would gladly have given up much more to the New Cause. As it was, the crusade seemed to her not a sacrifice, but an escape. An irresistible force was pushing her into Revolt--_la force majeure_ of poverty. She did not foresee what form her new life would take; she was ignorant of too many important things. But she reached a determination to seek out Miss Train at the earliest opportunity and enlist.