Nearly always the most inexperienced youth _feels straight_. Once the poison is drunk and you have let yourself go with the injected delirium, you will have lost the power to see and feel for yourself. VI NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE," WITH THE PROSTITUTE HEROINE, ARE, QUITE OBVIOUSLY, STRONG MORAL INTOXICANTS. One does not pronounce the subject forbidden. We know, and recognize, that a man's mistress _may_ be a nobler woman than his wife, the love between them more real; we know and recognize where mere passion may lead; and we do not carelessly push beyond the pale, those whom a hundred different circumstances—quite different degrees of moral weakness or reckless defiance through special trouble—may have led to live on man's desires. We do not dismiss them from thought, reading, and conversation. Nevertheless many novels now written use these most grave issues for mere dramatic effect, or to confound morality; and, to these ends, offer a falsely attractive picture of emotional adventure. In his terrible _Bed of Roses_, on the other hand, Mr. W. L. George treats his theme with the definite object of exposing the tragedy of a young woman with no training, suddenly forced to earn her living; and of expressing his righteous anger against the conditions of civilization. Because, he declares, "a woman can scratch up a living but not a future; and the only job she's really fit for is to be a man's keep, legal or illegal, permanent or temporary." The narrative itself is most emphatically not free from offence, but the motive is honest and sincere. Mr. Gilbert Cannan, again, with less earnest intention but still legitimately, seems to have written _Pink Roses_ to illustrate the demoralizing effects of the war on a quite decent, average young man, who was "left out" of things—through a weak heart. He drifts into an experiment of lust, but is not finally destroyed, because he recognized from the first that he had only sought the adventure—to fill the blank years. The frail "Cora" of Mr. Snaith's _Sailor_ merely stands for temptation, which no novelist can omit. The episode is not shirked, but it is treated with all the traditional reticence, which puts it outside our discussion here. In these examples the motive may be acknowledged towards justification; but such books as Mr. W. L. George's _Confessions of Ursula Trent_ only respond to a morbid preference for melodramatic atmosphere: they assume, and encourage, our interest in the unclean.