“Even if such a man could reform his conduct, he could not reform his physical constitution,” the physician said, turning his eyes away from his daughter’s face. “His children would be doomed, before their birth, to disease and insanity. To bring such beings into the world is a crime worse than murder, and will be dealt with as such as soon as society has escaped from the thraldom of the priests.”
It was not the first time that Hero had heard her father express similar sentiments. It was the personal application that was new—and terrifying.
“If I do not marry Alistair I shall never marry anyone else,” she said, after a tragic pause.
Sir Bernard glanced at her face, and saw it pale with resolution. He became afraid.
“That would be a crime on your part. It is the duty of the sound to marry, as much as it is the duty of the unsound to refrain.”
“Duty to whom?” asked Hero.
The question opened Vanbrugh’s eyes to the gulf that had come into existence during the past few weeks between him and his daughter. Hitherto Hero had been his child, and had looked at the world through his eyes. Now she loved another better than him, and had learned to look at the world through the eyes of the man she loved.
His answer was given without confidence.
“To society. To the order of Nature of which you are a part.”
“Society!” Hero’s tone breathed some of that scorn which she had caught from Alistair in their intimate communion with one another. “Society! that is the man in the street, isn’t it? Or is it the public?—the British public expects every man to do his duty!” Some of the bitter expressions that she had heard Alistair use came back to her with unexpected force, and half unconsciously she defended him in his own language. “The whole duty of man is to be one of a horde of drudges toiling to make a millionaire. That is civilization, isn’t it?—the social order to which we are all expected to conform. And the new religion is that we are to marry and have healthy children, that this great organized stupidity may go on for ever.”