Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:
“You had better be careful, constable.”
“You're a gentleman,” replied the policeman. “I'm only a policeman. You've got the riches, I've got the power.”
Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.
Shelton turned, and walked away.
He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa. His feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with the policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.
“What ought I to have done?” he thought, “the beggar was within his rights.”
He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged up in him.
“One or other of us,” he reflected, “we make these women what they are. And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't want to; but we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to prowl about the streets, and then we run them in. Ha! that's good—that's excellent! We run them in! And here we sit and carp. But what do we do? Nothing! Our system is the most highly moral known. We get the benefit without soiling even the hem of our phylacteries—the women are the only ones that suffer. And why should n't they—inferior things?”
He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.