“True!” she said, and after a moment she continued, “I am not so great as the one, nor have I the ‘effrontery’ of the other. But it is not so much that I lack courage; it is rather, perhaps, a delicate consideration for, and concession to, the good order of society.”
I regarded her with amazement, and she smiled.
“Really, it is true,” she said. “I believe in social order and I pay respect to it—”
“By concealing your own transgressions,” I interpolated.
“Well, why not? Suppose I and my cult—a very large class of eminently respectable sinners!—should openly trample upon this time-honored convention; the result would eventually be, no doubt, a moral anarchy. We have a very clear sense of our responsibility to the masses. We make the laws for their government, and we allow ourselves to seem to be governed by them also,—so that they may believe in them. We build churches and pay pew rent, though we do not much believe in the religious dogmas. And we leave off wine when we entertain temperance people.”
“But why do you do these things?” I asked; “to what end?”
“Simply for the preservation of good order and decency. You must know that the pleasant vices of an elegant person are brutalities in the uncultured. The masses have no tact or delicacy, they do not comprehend shades, and refinements of morals and manners. They can understand exoteric but not esoteric philosophy. We have really two codes of laws.”
“I think it would be far better for the masses—whom you so highly respect!—” I said, “if you were to throw off your masks and stand out before them just as you are. Let moral anarchy come if it must, and the evil be consumed in its own flame; out of its ashes the phœnix always rises again, a nobler bird.”
“How picturesque!” she exclaimed; “do you know, I think your language must be rich in imagery. I should like to learn it.”
I did not like the flippancy of this speech, and made no reply.