Other girls in the shop began to tell her their experiences. The career of a clandestine prostitute seemed rather the common thing. The good girls seemed rather pathetic and poverty struck; most of them were homely anyway; but there was her virtue to consider, the Church, the future. She would want to marry some one who would appreciate her beauty, who would demand that her womanhood be unscathed. She must compromise. She would give the man all that he wanted without losing her virtue technically. No man would have her completely. Then she could play the game. She had never heard of the perversions of sex, but she soon learned them and practised her arts with no sense of shame. She has no use for the working man—indeed, her life for the last four years has been a mixture of shop work or posing in the day and luxury at night. It would be impossible for her to live at home in an atmosphere of soapsuds and babies, hard work and poverty. When forced to think out the situation as it is, she is fair-minded. Virtue to her has become a technicality. She is not harmed and no man is strong enough to overcome her if she herself is frigid. She likes to be kissed and adores to rouse men’s passions. She thinks many girls are like her who have never given themselves wholly to men, but most of them are more easily roused. She seldom stays all night with a man. She likes to “keep them guessing.” Besides her mother would make trouble if she stayed out all night. If she thinks she is at a dance, she says nothing about her coming in late. She admits her scorn of her own station in life but says the luxury-loving age is responsible for that, that no girl who loves pretty things (which most women do) is going to be content with shabby clothes and stupid makeshifts if she can be as feminine and as lovely as other women who do not work and yet have their hearts’ desires. She does not think she does the men harm; in fact, she is a good companion and coarseness of speech is repugnant to her. She smokes cigarettes but drinks very little. She admits she has no motive in life except to marry, some day, a man who has a good deal of money. She could easily marry a rich man; several have already asked her but she intends to wait a while. She knows the pleasures of the intellect are not for her. She says excitement has been her master and that nothing else in the world matters greatly. Cold and superficial, she admits she is not much of a woman but denies that her conscience is dead,—says it has never been born. The girls who are mistresses to one man have more womanly qualities than she because they are aroused and fully developed. She has no desire for children, does not care for them, but has no aversion to having one. It would have to be a pretty baby and must be brought up nicely. Clutter, pots and pans and drudgery are as remote from her life as if she had been born a princess.