What is likely to happen now when the full years of war change to empty years of peace? No longer able to spend in the way to which their high wages have made them accustomed, girls will seek to get presents from men; they will want excitement and the dress and pleasures to satisfy that need, also to hold the envy of their friends. This must lead to prostitution. The weaker sort of girl will prefer to sell her body rather than go back to a humdrum life of drudgery in back-kitchens. It is well that we should remember that, if women are to suffer through men's passions, men will suffer no less from women's greed. I desire to be quite fair. Almost all girls, I think, are better looking since 1914, more confident, more brightly attractive; sometimes they are deliriously gay, more often cheaply aggressive and noisy. Yet, at other times, they seem deadened and slow in response. None of them are shy. Their eyes say things that are hard to read; they exhibit no end of energy, but there is a curious kind of contradiction--a confusion and difficult defiance, with much nervous weakness. I can find no steadfast happiness. I would ask my readers, as often I have asked myself, a question: Have these modern girls not lost much of the tender, waiting, indefiniteness of youth? I have seen so many among them who, to me at least, appear at odds with the world, and their passionate, unbalanced and over-excited natures. Their faces at sixteen, fifteen, and even at fourteen years, already are old, with hard confidence showing in the bold gaze, but no happiness. How many bear an expression of almost tired disappointment, a disappointment, not of the senses, but of the soul. And this expression is so common. To my eyes, girls far more and far oftener look alike now than formerly they did. So often they seem acting, struggling almost against something in themselves; something they don't understand that draws them into many bewildered actions. Can't you see, they are all so unconsciously dissatisfied, so unable to possess themselves in peace, that nothing they do matters? You will, I am sure, deny this statement. You will tell me again of the splendid work done by these girls and young women, you will speak of their recognition as citizens of the State, of how life has opened to them, and of the new liberty they have gained in so many directions. I do not mind. I care nothing for the liberty in outside things that leaves the soul in chains. I tell you they are dissatisfied because the soul of woman is crushed, unable to come up from its dark hiding, and breathe the sun and light to see that life is good. Why cannot the old faith come back? Why cannot it come back? VII