"My dear," answered the Englishwoman, "if you're good, you haven't a chance at all. It's just a question of whether you have or haven't enough to live on. The best guardian of a man's virtue is the worst enemy of a woman's--and that's an empty pocketbook, my dear." But Violet was in no mind for generalizations. "It's a business, then, ain't it?" she asked. "A regular business," nodded Evelyn,--"fifty cents up--and now that they've smashed the lotteries, policy, and the races, it's more of a business than ever. There are hundreds of young chaps all over the country who make their living by selling girls to places like this--and worse than this; and there are more who make better livings by making one, or two, or even three girls walk the street for them. Just now, in New York, the street's the main thing." "An' people like Miss Rose----?" "They buy the girls and pay a percentage on their work, my dear, till the debt's cleared. Sometimes they give their girls nothing but brass checks for every job, but whether we get brass checks or real cash, it's all the same: board and lodging and clothes are so high that we never get out of debt to the madam. Trust her for that!" She had a thorough knowledge of her subject, and she ran on as if her only interest in it were economic. She talked of Denver, with its two-room houses in which the front seemed one large window where the sole inmate displayed her wares; of Chicago with the curtained doors through which was thrust only a hand to receive the varying price of admission, even a quarter of a dollar occasionally sufficing; of the same city's infamous club maintained by politicians for their own debauches. She told of the proprietresses making a specialty of "sending out" for girls that worked at other and ill-paid tasks by day; of women conducting flats on a partnership basis; of those who rented, for high prices, houses that would otherwise be tenantless because of poor conditions or the opening of some street that must soon be cut through the premises. She said that young girls unsoiled would sometimes fetch their owners fifty dollars for their initial destruction, but that, as a rule, the sums were relatively small. "And Miss Rose has to pay the police," asked Violet; "don't she?" "She does just, little innocent. And the police have to pay the officers above them, and the officers above them have to pay the ward-bosses above _them_--and there you are. It's all the worse since the bosses can't make any money from gambling-houses, and it's all the worse since the business got organized and meant votes for the gang at every election.--Oh," Evelyn broke off--"I tell you it's the same in every city the world over, my dear, and you and I haven't even the comfort of being exceptions." "Don't people know about it?" "People don't want to know about it. People don't want to feel badly. People say that it isn't true, and that, if it is true, it isn't fit to mention."