To me, your reckless acceptance of this chance engagement at the Gayety seems inexpressibly degrading; it is a lowering of every ideal with which my imagination has heretofore invested your character.

I am not puritanical, but I confess having held you to a higher plane than others of my acquaintance, and I find it hard to realize my evident mistake.

Yet, surely, you cannot fully comprehend what it is you are choosing, I was with you last night, true, but I considered it no honor to appear upon _that_ stage, even with the 'Heart of the World,' and it hurt me even then to behold you in the midst of such surroundings.

But deliberately to take part in the regular variety bill is a vastly more serious matter.

It is almost a total surrender to evil, and involves a daily and nightly association with vice which cannot but prove most repugnant to true womanhood.
Surely, you do not know the true nature of this place ?" "Then tell it to me." "I will, and without any mincing of words.