The theory was that there were two worlds, and that they were kept rigidly separate.  There were two sets of women; one to be toyed with and flung aside, and the other to be protected and esteemed.  Such things as prostitutes and kept women might exist, but people of refinement did not talk about them, and were not concerned with them.  But Montague was familiar with the saying, that if you follow the chain of the slave, you will find the other end about the wrist of the master; and he discovered that the Tenderloin was wreaking its vengeance upon Fifth Avenue.  It was not merely that the men of wealth were carrying to their wives and children the diseases of vice; they were carrying also the manners and the ideals.

Montague had been amazed by the things he had found in New York Society; the smoking and drinking and gambling of women, their hard and cynical views of life, their continual telling of coarse stories.  And here, in this under-world, he had come upon the fountain head of the corruption.  It was something which came to him in a sudden flash of intuition;—­the barriers between the two worlds were breaking down!

He could picture the process in a hundred different forms.  There was Betty Wyman.  His brother had meant to take her to the theatre, to let her see Rosalie, by way of a joke!  So, of course, Betty knew of his escapades, and of those of his set; she and her girl friends were whispering and jesting about them.  Hero sat Oliver, smiling and cynical, toying with Rosalie as a cat might toy with a mouse; and to-morrow he would be with Betty—­and could anyone doubt any longer whence Betty had derived her attitude towards life?  And the habits of mind that Oliver had taught her as a girl she would not forget as a wife; he might be anxious to keep her to himself, but there would be others whose interest was different.

And Montague recalled other things that he had seen or heard in.  Society, that he could put his finger upon, as having come out of this under-world.  Tho more he thought of the explanation, the more it seemed to explain.  This “Society,” which had perplexed him—­now he could describe it:  its manners and ideals of life were those which he would have expected to find in the “fast” side of stage life.

It was, of course, the women who made Society, and gave it its tone; and the women of Society were actresses.  They were actresses in their love of notoriety and display; in their taste in clothes and jewels, their fondness for cigarettes and champagne.  They made up like actresses; they talked and thought like actresses.  The only obvious difference was that the women of the stage were carefully selected—­were at least up to a certain standard of physical excellence; whereas the women of Society were not selected at all, and some were lean, and some were stout, and some were painfully homely.