“I suppose so.”
“Explain yourself!”
“She’s accepted a life contrary to Society’s code or her own code—if she was ever unconventional enough to have one, which I doubt.”
Nielsen smiled. “If what you say is true, we’re all of us more or less immoral.”
“Why so?”
“Because every one barters his soul some time during his existence, and some of us are doing so all the time. At heart, you know, we’re most of us, unmoral, in appearance, moral, but in action, immoral.”
Breen laughed in amiable derision. “What scrambled egg philosophy!” he cried. “Where did you learn it, noble scholar?”
“Nowhere,” Nielsen answered and frowned. But his ready good nature intervened and he observed gently: “At any rate, Breen, I disagree with you regarding Erna.”
“That she’s neither moral nor immoral?”
“She has a little bit of each—like all of us,” the young author agreed; “but fundamentally she’s unmoral.”