The Army tried to help her in vain, and
wrote her many letters. In the end she died in an Infirmary, when all
the letters were found carefully hidden away among her belongings and
returned to the Major.
The average number of rescues compassed, directly or indirectly, by
the Piccadilly Midnight work is about fifty a year. This is not a very
great result; but after all the taking of even a few people from this
hellish life and their restoration to decency and self-respect is well
worth the cost and labour of the mission. The Officers told me that
they meet with but little success in the case of those women who are
in their bloom and earning great incomes. It can scarcely be
otherwise, for what has the Army to offer them in place of their
gaudy, glittering life of luxury and excitement?
The way of transgressors is hard, but the way of repentance is harder;
at any rate, while the transgressor is doing well. On the one hand
jewels and champagne, furs and motors, and on the other prayers that
talk of death and judgment, plain garments made by the wearer's
labour, and at the end the drudgery of earning an honest livelihood,
perhaps as a servant.
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