“Eleven years.”
“Good God! how can you be so calm? How can you look so hopeful?”
“Because I am hopeful. In all the thousands of cases I have known I have never once lost hope. When I do, my work is over.”
“You’re wonderful!” he exclaimed.
“No, I am reasonable. I don’t expect the impossible. I am glad of every inch of ground gained. I don’t demand an acre. If one girl is rescued out of twenty—”
“But why does it need to be at all?” Jarvis interrupted her.
“Why does disease need to be? Why does unhappiness need to be, or war, or the money-lust that will one day wreck us? We only know that these things are. Our business is to set about doing what we can.”
“One girl out of twenty,” he repeated. “What becomes of the other nineteen?”
“I said I was glad of one girl in twenty. Sometimes several of the nineteen come out all right. Bedford helps a great many. They marry, they keep straight, or—they die very soon.”
“Tell me about Bedford.”
