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By an accident Corinne also got arrested one day, and sat on the same bench with them. A greater contrast could hardly be imagined. Corinne sells goods in an exclusive shop all day, and knows the difference between a local hat and a French model for $50 as well as her customers. She has the same standards of dress that they have, looks as well in high-priced clothes, and suffers as much as they from clothes of inferior make. Her wages, however, do not cover the expense of such a wardrobe, so she consorts with men who can and will help her pay for it. Millie and Ella loudly protest their affection for their men, but Corinne, when asked if her feelings are engaged with any of hers, gives a shrug which says as plainly as words, "Don't be silly!" Other women marry for a living; eventually she intends to do so herself, and she undoubtedly will. In the meantime she intends to dress well by the only means she can -- for if she does not dress well, she will never induce the type of man she wants to marry her. It is a vicious circle, but as simple as arithmetic. In fact, her behavior is based entirely upon bookkeeping. Finance, and not emotion, has been her downfall. The two unpardonable sins, to her, are to be unwashed and to be a fool, and Millie and Ella are obviously both. They glare at her and call her a brass chicken. She glances at them and their grimy consorts and murmurs, "Page the Board of Health." Each girl is as sure of her own code and as disgusted with those of the others as the most righteous of vestals. Even Ella has her boast: she is the only woman of the three who shares her residence with her own husband.

Still another type is Pauline. Pauline could not get on at home. Her father demanded her pay envelope and her mother would not let her go to dances. So she ran away, got herself a job, and now lives in a rooming-house. Occasionally she goes broke, and then and then only, she picks up a few dollars on the street to pay her rent and get some clothes. "When I had my teeth out it cost an awful lot, and once I wanted Susie to visit me, and her ticket was $40. But I don't hustle much. Honest I don't. I haven't hustled since last November, when I got my fur coat." It is Pauline's boast that she "hustles" only to pay her honest debts.

Nina's boast is just the reverse. I recall meeting her just after an interview with Pauline, when I still rashly assumed that because both were young, immoral, and poor, their folkways were the same. Nothing could be further from the case. Nina admitted her irregular habits with the utter lack of embarrassment of a clear conscience, but at some remark of mine based upon Pauline's behavior she flared up.

"You don't think I am low, do you?" the asked, with her first blush rising to her eyebrows.

"I thought you just told me yourself what you had done," I answered, astonished at this anger.

"But do you think I take money for it?" she blazed back. "When I go wild, I go for fun, and because I want to. I would never be so low as to take a cent if I starved for it. That's me all over, Missis. What jazzing round I do, I do for nothing."

Nina is therefore known among the sisterhood as a Charity, and viewed with admiration or contempt, according to their codes. In some standard vocabularies used in mental examinations the word Charity occurs to test the observer's ability to understand abstract terms. Not for some time did I discover why mention of this virtue caused such embarrassment, and why there was often such a hasty denial of any idea as to its meaning. To be a Charity is to be amiable without payment. It is a badge of distinction to the Ninas who glory in their love of gaiety and their indifference to reward -- but "poor boobs" sneer Pauline and Corinne at the scabs of their trade. "Regular guys we are,'' boast the Charitys. It is as sobering to reflect upon the debasement of this fine old word and the probable connotation of charity hospitals and Sisters of Charity to the Ninas of society, as it is from time to time to note the mismanagement of some banking house operating under the title of Equity, Fidelity, or Trust. If words were conscious, they would shudder at their own misuse.

III

But whatever the lines which mark their social levels, and whatever their arguments as to what is high and what is low, there is usually an agreement among sex delinquents that racial lines must be recognized in their profession. The white girl who so far forgets herself as to consort voluntarily with men of the black or yellow races must be low indeed. "A coon or a chink, I should say not! I wouldn't lower myself," says Leona with her pert little cackle. It is the only standard that she knows, but she draws her color line with firmness and with pride.

However, all girls do not share Leona's scruples. Not only that, but some of them have developed a code by which they convince themselves that other races show them a kindness and deference which they cannot expect from their own. They can even demand polite formalities from their social inferiors which would be absurd if they were not so tragic. Girls of this type usually admit their own degradation with complete candor. "Of course I'm low or I wouldn't stand for it," they say with disarming earnestness. And the exhibition of an emotional life so young, yet so petrified, affects at least one observer like the face of a child with sightless eyes. There is profound pathos in finding ashes where the fires of youth should be, and to watch such a girl linger in the doorway, as she turns inevitably to reenter a life from which it is too late to wean her, is like watching a frail ghost reenter her own grave. After such encounters one understands why Dante incased his lowest Hell in ice, below even the reach of fire. Yet there are still lower depths and more grotesque and distorted folkways -- but is it profitable to multiply examples?