"Won't you at least meet me away from this awful place and try to spend at least part of your evenings in the respectable way to which you were accustomed?" was asked. "I will meet you where no one would recognize either you or I," was the reply. "I would not disgrace you by having anyone know me. "You will not meet the little girl you knew, though. Henceforth you must meet a fallen woman, a woman who sells her flesh, pound by pound, to human vultures. You had best change your mind. For myself, I would be delighted to be with you, but the old memories are painful. I will see you but you must never come here for me." When the reporter left the sin-cursed place, there were tears in his eyes. To him it was as though he were deserting his own sister to the ravages of a pack of wolves. Half a block away from the place he paused in deep thought. Should he go at once to her parents and tell them of the finding of their daughter, that she was alive? He knew they would gladly receive her back, that any and all of her wrongs would be overlooked. He thought of their great love for her, of their deep grief in her death. But as he thought, he could see a fireside in a city but a few hundred miles distant. Side by side sat a couple. The man was a personage slightly bent, as though bowed down with some grief in the middle of life. The woman's hair was tinged with gray. Her motherly face was lit by a radiant smile, as though she were dreaming of something heavenly. He could see them clasp hands and sit for hours dreaming of the happiness of but a few months before. Then the father would rise, and, walking across the room, caress some tiny trinket, such as gladdens the heart of a girl. He would pick up a picture, that of a beautiful, laughing girl, radiant in the innocence of the unknowing girl. Long he would gaze at it. Then imprinting a kiss on the face of the picture, he would lay it carefully back in its place. They were happy in the thought that their child was in a better world--of that fact they had no doubt. The reporter's mind was quickly made up. "It is better so," he half muttered. "It is better so." Slowly he retraced his steps past the den where he had found her. An automobile had just come to a stop at the curb. Several well dressed men, in the last stages of intoxication, staggered from the car. Swearing and cursing, they mounted the steps of the house. The door was opened to admit them. From the house came the wild scream of a drunken woman mingled with the coarser yells of drunken men. Then the door closed. CHAPTER II. THE TRAGEDY OF THE "WANT AD." In April, 1909, a peculiarly worded advertisement appeared in the personal columns of the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Tribune. It was worded as follows: