What indeed!  The thought came like an avalanche, stripping away the veneer of beauty from the face of the world, revealing the scarred rock and crushed soil beneath.  This was reality!  What right had society to compel a child to be born to degradation and prostitution? to beget, perhaps, other children of suffering?  Were not she and Lise of the exploited, of those duped and tempted by the fair things the more fortunate enjoyed unscathed?  And now, for their natural cravings, their family must be disgraced, they must pay the penalty of outcasts!  Neither Lise nor she had had a chance.  She saw that, now.  The scorching revelation of life’s injustice lighted within her the fires of anarchy and revenge.  Lise, other women might submit tamely to be crushed, might be lulled and drugged by bribes:  she would not.  A wild desire seized her to get back to Hampton.

“Give me the address of the hospital,” she said.

“Come off!” cried Lise, in angry bravado.  “Do you think I’m going to let you butt into this?  I guess you’ve got enough to do to look out for your own business.”

Janet produced a pencil from her bag, and going to the table tore off a piece of the paper in which had been wrapped the candy box.

“Give me the address,” she insisted.

“Say, what are you going to do?”

“I want to know where you are, in case anything happens to you.”

“Anything happens!  What do you mean?” Janet’s words had frightened Lise, the withdrawal of Janet’s opposition bewildered her.  But above all, she was cowed by the sudden change in Janet herself, by the attitude of steely determination eloquent of an animus persons of Lise’s type are incapable of feeling, and which to them is therefore incomprehensible.  “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” she whined.  “The place is all right —­he’d be scared to send me there if it wasn’t.  It costs something, too.  Say, you ain’t going to tell ’em at home?” she cried with a fresh access of alarm.

“If you do as I say, I won’t tell anybody,” Janet replied, in that odd, impersonal tone her voice had acquired.  “You must write me as soon—­as soon as it is over.  Do you understand?”

“Honest to God I will,” Lise assured her.

“And you mustn’t come back to a house like this.”

“Where’ll I go?” Lise asked.

“I don’t know.  We’ll find out when the time comes,” said Janet, significantly.

“You’ve seen him!” Lise exclaimed.

“No,” said Janet, “and I don’t want to see him unless I have to.  Mr. Tiernan has seen him.  Mr. Tiernan is downstairs now, waiting for me.”

“Johnny Tiernan!  Is Johnny Tiernan downstairs?”

Janet wrote the address, and thrust the slip of paper in her bag.