2. A man's home is his castle.
3. A woman's rights are equal to a man's rights.
4. Only the brave deserve the fair.
Lauria looked in the mirror, almost fearfully.
She saw with approval the breadth of her hips, the erectness of her shoulders. With more reluctance, her eyes rose to her face. There was still beauty there, she told herself, to the discerning eye. That touch of slackness to the jaw, that faint hollowness of cheek: those were no doubt exaggerated by the dimness of the room.
In a table drawer, Lauria found jars and tubes. From them she carefully filled in a fuller form for her mouth, dabbed heavily at her cheeks, touched up her eyes, smeared over her jawline. She fluffed out the thinning blond hair and donned a light scarf then she removed the heavy bars from the front door. She went out, and locked its triple locks behind her. She gazed around cautiously and stepped lightly down the gravelled path. Around the house, the grounds were a solid mass of blooming flowers. Lauria had plenty of time to spend in the garden. The baskets and other handicraft articles that were her means of income left her a good deal of leisure, and cooking and household chores were routine and brief.
Farther from the house, the grounds looked better kept than they were. It was fortunate that the blue grass of the planet Pamplin grew short and neat, for Lauria never would have been able to keep the ten acres of her property trimmed. But the big trees that shaded the grounds had dropped twigs and leaves that she wouldn't clear away until the big effort of the fall clean-up.
The path curved down past a small cleared area in which a dozen upright wooden markers were spaced in rows. This was the cemetery.
She paused to look out across the neat rows of markers. There were men buried there. Twelve young men. They had died by her hand, in accordance with the Constitution and the law.
At one end of the cemetery stood a large wooden plaque on which she had carved the Constitution of Pamplin. Many times had her mother explained the meaning of the Constitution to Lauria, when Lauria was a little girl and still intruding on her mother's privacy.