The wine shall have been sipped. Nothing then but the bitter dregs! Oh, the horror of that approaching tragedy!

Her end is inevitable.

An early grave, a house of prostitution or an insane asylum! There is rarely ever a turning back.

Vice buries its tentacles deep in the flesh.

THE FIRST STEP.

“Dearie, don’t be afraid of that. Really, it’s like a ‘soft’ drink. It won’t make you drunk.”

Again you turn on hearing that remark.

He is leaning over the table;—a gray-haired, fashionably dressed man. The young girl he is talking to, is not more than sixteen years of age.

Her face is white. Her eyes are like those of a hunted deer. Her hands tremble.

It is her first night!