Here she has turned from her more objective work to the graphic interpretation of a social menace; and it is here, perhaps, that she finds herself with surest touch. Her conception of white slavery is as searching in its indictment, as ruthless, cruel and scourging as the fact itself. One visitor who saw those haunting figures at the International Exhibition said afterward: “I was passing through that room of the exhibit when suddenly I faced it—I could not go on. I had vaguely realized that this horrible thing was in the world, but it had never touched _me_. I sat there for perhaps an hour, thinking—and thinking—” This woman was one who has led what is called a “sheltered” existence, whose instinct would be to turn from any discussion or writing on this subject. It is this thought-compelling quality in such work which links it as a social force with, say, the dispassionate but terrible report of the Chicago Vice Commission, or with Elizabeth Robins’ My Little Sister. It is interesting to know that Miss Eberle worked out the composition for the White Slave four years ago; but the actual work of modelling was done in the four weeks’ interval between the time she was invited to send some of her work to last winter’s International Art Exhibition and its opening. Until then, she had felt that the time had perhaps not come when such a group would be received except as an unwelcome effort toward sensationalism. It is the first of several such interpretative subjects which she has in mind, and which, if worked out in an equally sincere spirit, should be big in social significance. But after all is said, Miss Eberle consistently holds with the many who believe that the first function of art is not didactic. Much of her work besides that shown here is conceived in a spirit of sheer joy in beauty of form and line, and one may go far to find a more exquisitely modelled figure than that of the utterly submissive, despairful child-victim of the white slaver. To use her own words: “It is the beauty that is in the world _today_ that appeals to me—not what may have existed centuries ago in Greece. Though I love that, too, I will not shut my eyes to the present and continue to echo the past. No matter how ugly the present might be, I would rather live in it. After all, ugliness, as well as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,—and the present _isn’t_ ugly at all, but full of a wonderful interest, as a few of us are beginning to find out. We are trying to find new bottles for new wine—Greek vases are about worn out.” [Illustration: _THE BATH HOUR_ ]