"Well, yes, I suppose it is." Even while he had been speaking, the same idea was at the back of his own mind. Things have a way of never getting 'all over,' of possessing no absolute ends, of continuing, for good and evil, to affect life till life itself ends—and even, after that, of affecting other lives sometimes. Bertie Merriam himself, thoughtfully considering, saw that the thing was by no means 'all over' with the coming of the news contained in the Times of the 26th.
"And now," said Winnie, rising from her chair, "I'm going to talk nonsense with the Layton girl and the Anstruther boys, and forget all about it for a bit." She stood looking at him for a moment in a very friendly, rather puzzled, way. She wanted to convey to him that she would consider it very natural for her disclosure to make all the difference, but the assurance was not easy to frame without assuming more than she was, by the forms of the game, entitled to assume. She got as near to it as she could. "I've been prepared to accept the consequences all through. If I claim liberty of opinion myself, I allow it to others, Major Merriam."
"Yes, yes, I quite understand. You surely don't fear a harsh judgment from me?" He added, after the briefest pause, "Or from my father?"
"I don't think I need. You've both been such kind good friends to me." She broke into a smile. "And, of course, on my theory I don't admit that I'm properly a subject of judgment at all."
"But you admit that I may think differently if I like?"
"Yes, I admit that. We may all think what we like, and do as we like, so long as we do it sincerely."
"Wouldn't things get rather—well, chaotic—under that system?" he asked, smiling in his turn.
"I knew I shouldn't convert you—you stickler for discipline!"
He heard the description with a laugh, but without protest or disclaimer. To his ears it was a compliment. Nor did he think Winnie, so far as he claimed to understand her, quite so scornful of all discipline as her playful taunt implied, nor in practice so thoroughgoing an anarchist as her theory of the unbridled liberty of private judgment required in logic that she should be. She did not appear to him a naturally lawless woman, nor even unusually volatile. She had had 'hard luck' and had fought against it blindly and recklessly. But, given good conditions, she would readily conform to the standards, since she would not want to do anything else. Taking this view, he saw little reason to revise his judgment or to alter his intentions, so far as the judgment and intentions depended on his estimate of the woman herself. Her candour was even a new point in her favour.
So far then neither Winnie nor even Mrs. Lenoir need regret the disclosure. The case, when fully explained, seemed to the Major eminently pardonable—at worst, a piece of visionary folly in which an ignorant young woman had rashly matched herself against the world. But there was another aspect of the case. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Perhaps. But some people shrink from understanding things for that very reason; the consequences seem too alarming and even revolutionary. And the great bulk of people, even if they were willing to understand every case, have really no time to do it; it cannot be expected of them in this busy life. They find themselves obliged to work by generalizations and categories, to bind by rules and prohibitions admitting of no exception. It is the only way by which people in a society can tackle the job of estimating the conduct of other people, or indeed of regulating their own. The world labels in rows and pronounces judgment on squads, an inevitably rough-and-ready method, but—the world pleads—the only practical alternative to a moral anarchy against which it must protect itself, even though at the cost of constantly passing the same sentence on offenders of widely different degrees of criminality.