A contribution to the meagre stock of good fortune of the present time is furnished however by the joy of life among young girls working under favourable conditions. Among them we meet a new soul condition, which could be designated, as briefly as possible, as _covetousness_ of everything which can promote their personal development and a beautiful _liberality_ with what is thus won. They can gratify their energetic desire for self-development by sport, travel, books, art and other means of culture; their freedom of action between working hours is not restricted by private duties. They can utilise their leisure time and their income as they please: for recreation, pleasure, social intercourse, social work or private, charitable activity. No father nor husband encroaches upon their free agency. And so dear does this liberty become to them through the manifold joys which it furnishes, that these young girls, in constantly increasing numbers, refuse to relinquish their individual independence for the sake of a marriage which, even presupposing the happiest love, always means a restriction of the freedom of movement that they enjoyed while single. And since the modern woman knows that, in the sphere of spiritual values, nothing can be attained without sacrifice, she prefers to keep free agency and to sacrifice love. If she chooses in the opposite direction, the task of adaptation will be the more difficult, the longer and the more intensely she has enjoyed freedom. The modern young girl, if she deigns to bestow her hand upon a man, not infrequently has her pretty head so crammed full of principles of equality that she sometimes (frequently in America), by written contract establishes her independence to the smallest detail, which sometimes includes separate apartments and the prohibition that either of the contracting parties shall have the key to the apartment of the other.