“Is it a new thing to you for a parent not to acknowledge illegitimate children?”
“Even the lowest class of mothers we have on Earth do not often abandon their offspring,” I replied.
“Neither do they here,” she said. “The lowest class have nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and consequently there is no necessity that they should sacrifice their natural affections. In this respect, the lower classes are better off than we aristocrats.”
“You beg the question,” I returned; “you know what I mean! I should not have thought that you, Elodia, could ever be moved by such unworthy considerations—that you would ever fear the world’s opinions! you who profess manly qualities, the noblest of which is courage!”
“Am I to understand by that,” she said, “that men on your planet acknowledge their illegitimate progeny, and allow them the privileges of honored sons and daughters?”
Pushed to this extremity, I could recall but a single instance,—but one man whose courage and generosity, in a case of the kind under discussion, had risen to the level of his crime. I related to her the story of his splendid and prolonged life, with its one blot of early sin, and its grace of practical repentance. And upon the other hand, I told her of the one distinguished modern woman, who has had the hardihood to face the world with her offenses in her hands, as one might say.
“Are you not rather unjust to the woman?” she asked. “You speak of the man’s acknowledgment of his sin as something fine, and you seem to regard hers as simply impudent.”
“Because of the vast difference between the moral attitude of the two,” I rejoined. “He confessed his error and took his punishment with humility; she slaps society in the face, and tries to make her genius glorify her misdeeds.”
“Possibly society is to blame for that, by setting her at bay. If I have got the right idea about your society, it is as unrelenting to the one sex as it is indulgent to the other. Doubtless it was ready with open arms to receive back the offending, repentant man, but would it not have set its foot upon the woman’s neck if she had given it the chance, if she had knelt in humility as he did? A tree bears fruit after its kind; so does a code of morals. Gentleness and forgiveness breed repentance and reformation, and harshness begets defiance.” She added with a laugh, “What a spectacle your civilization would present if all the women who have sinned had the genius and the spirit of a Bernhardt!”
“Or all the men had the magnanimity of a Franklin,” I retorted.