The "divorce colony" never appeared more sickening in its inner corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those already well known. The girl turned suddenly to her companion. "How do those people live out here on their farms?" She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the train go by. "By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork." "Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!" He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?" "At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to boarding school. I learned a good deal more than you think." "Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours, speaking from experience." "Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?" "They work like the men, only more so." "Do they have any new things?" "Not very often, I'm afraid." She sighed. After a pause she said: "You were raised on a farm?" "Yes. In Minnesota." "Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing machine in the field. "Yes, I plowed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm for my health." "You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked admiringly. "In a slab-sided kind of a way--yes." Her eyes grew abstracted. "I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am, but when he was drunk he was what men call a--a--holy terror. He struck me with the water pitcher once--that was just before baby was born. I wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this terrible country." "It might have saved you from more than you think," he said quietly, tenderly. "What do you mean?" "You've been brought up against women and men who have defiled you. They've made your future uncertain." "Do you think it's so bad as that? Tell me!" she insisted, seeing his hesitation. "You're on the road to hell!" he said, in a voice that was very low, but it reached her. It was full of pain and grave reprimand and gentleness. "You've been poisoned. You're in need of a good man's help. You need the companionship of good, earnest women instead of painted harlots." Her voice shook painfully as she replied: "You don't think I'm _all_ bad?" "You're not bad at all--you're simply reckless. _You_ are not to blame. It depends upon yourself now, though, whether you keep a true woman or go to hell with Mrs. Shellberg."