She was witnessing now the first stage in the progress of a victim of the business of domesticity.

To-day Florrie was a charming young creature, full of slender grace.

Soon she would be a dehumanized drudge.

And Hilda could not stop it! All over the town, in every street of the town, behind all the nice curtains and blinds, the same hidden shame was being enacted: a vast, sloppy, steaming, greasy, social horror--inevitable! It amounted to barbarism, Hilda thought in her revolt.

She turned from it with loathing.