“Glory,” he said, “if you are ashamed of this life, believe me it is not a right one.” “Ashamed? Why should I be ashamed? Everybody is saying how proud I should be.” She spoke feverishly, and by a sudden impulse she plucked up the paper, but as suddenly let it drop again, for, looking at his grave face, her little fame seemed to shrivel up. “But give a dog a bad name you know----You were there on Monday night. Did you see anything, now--anything in the performance----” “I saw the audience, Glory; that was enough for me. It is impossible for a girl to live long in an atmosphere like that and be a good woman. Yes, my child, impossible' God forbid that I should sit in judgment on any man, still less on any woman!--but the women of the music hall, do they remain good women? Poor souls, they are placed in a position so false that it would require extraordinary virtue not to become false along with it! And the whiter the soul that is dragged through that--that mire, the more the defilement. The audiences at such places don't want the white soul, they don't want the good woman, they want the woman who has tasted of the tree of good and evil. You can see it in their faces, and hear it in their laughter, and measure it in their applause. Oh, I'm only a priest, but I've seen these places all the world over, and I know what I'm saying, and I know it's true and you know it's true, Glory----” Glory leaped up from the table and her eyes seemed to emit fire. “I know it's hard and cruel and pitiless, and, since you were there on Monday and saw how kind the audience was to _me_, it's personal and untrue as well.” But her voice broke and she sat down again and said in another tone: “But, John, it's nearly a year, you know, since we saw each other last, and isn't it a pity? Tell me, where are you living now? Have you made your plans for the future? Oh, who do you think was with me just before you called yesterday? Polly--Polly Love, you remember! She's grown stout and plainer, poor thing, and I was so sorry----Her brother was in your Brotherhood, wasn't he? Is he as strangely fond of her as ever? Is he? Eh? Don't you understand? Polly's brother, I mean?” “He's dead, Glory. Yes, dead. He died a month ago. Poor boy, he died broken-hearted! He had come to hear of his sister's trouble at the hospital. I was to blame for that. He never looked up again.”