"At least, if they are, they are in the main willing victims," I argued. "There may be a few instances like the girl I saw, but for the most part they have done it of their own volition." Wolffert turned on me with fire flaming in his deep eyes. "Of their own volition! What is their volition? In fact, most of them are not voluntary accomplices. But if they were--it is simple ignorance on their part, and is that any reason for their undergoing the tortures of the damned in this world, not to mention what your Church teaches of the next world? Who brought them there--the man who deceived and betrayed them? Who acted on their weakness and drew them in?--their seducers?--the wretches who lure them to their destruction?--Not at all! Jail-birds and scoundrels as they are, deserving the gallows if any one does, which I do not think any one does--but you do--the ultimate miscreant is not even the Coll McSheens who protect it; but Society which permits it to go on unchecked when, by the least serious and sensible effort, it could prevent it." "How?" I demanded. "How! By determining to prevent it and then organizing to do so. By simply being honest. Has it not broken up the institution of slavery--highway robbery, organized murder--except by itself and its members? Of course, it could prevent it if it set itself to do it. But it is so steeped in selfishness and hypocrisy that it has no mind to anything that interferes with its pleasures." We had now reached John Marvel's, where we found John, just back from a visit to a poor girl who was ill, and his account only added fuel to Wolffert's flaming wrath. He was pacing up and down the floor, as small as it was, his face working, his eyes flashing, and suddenly he let a light in on his ultimate motive. He launched out in a tirade against existing social conditions that exceeded anything I had ever heard. He declared that within hearing of the most opulent and extravagant class the world had ever known were the cries and groans of the most wretched; that the former shut their ears and their eyes to it, and, contenting themselves with tossing a few pennies to a starving multitude, went on wallowing like swine in their own voluptuousness. "Look at the most talked of young man in this city to-day, the _bon parti_, the coveted of aspiring mothers. He lives a life to make a beast blush. He is a seducer of women, a denizen of brothels; a gambler in the life-blood of women and children, a fatted swine, yet he is the courted and petted of those who call themselves the best people! Faugh! it makes me sick." This was to some extent satisfactory to me, for I detested Canter; but I wondered if Wolffert did not have the same reason for disliking him that I had.