“I’m sorry. I’ve been clumsy ... and selfish.”
“You have.”
“But you’ll tell me what you think—how this whole thing over here affects you? Don’t think about my case in particular if that is offensive, but about the whole system, the whole idea of the relations between men and women as we see them here.”
“I will, because I would like to find out just how I have been affected....” Suddenly she laughed. “I used to have an uncle who spent his life arguing abstractions. I remember he took the stand once that there was no reason why women should not smoke as well as men, that there was nothing inherently masculine about smoking and nothing immoral. He declared that women had as much right to smoke as men. My aunt listened to it until she got tired, so one evening she waited until uncle lighted a cigar and then took out a cigarette and put it between her lips.... Uncle stared at her and roared. He fairly snatched that cigarette, and it looked as if he was going to put my aunt out of the house.... Smoking for women was all right as an abstract question, but when it touched him personally it was quite another matter.... I think I am a little like him. I can sit down and say that these girls are within their rights. I can even see that they are good.... I believe your Andree is wonderfully good.... I can even say that if so many Americans were killed in this war that I would never be able to find a husband I might do the same thing—and I believe it would be right and moral for me to do it ... in the abstract. I can feel these things in Paris. But as soon as I come to a concrete instance and one which touches me personally—why, I’m Middle West and Plymouth Rock again.... One can never tell. Things can happen here—even to an American girl like me—that never could happen in America in normal conditions. With this war going on, with this horrible state of affairs, nothing else seems to matter much. Personal moral considerations seem to be so minute and unimportant as not to count at all.... There is something in the very air.... You see we don’t know France—only a small section of it that we see about the streets. We don’t know how the classes of France who stay in their homes and are never seen on the boulevards look at this matter. They may be as straitlaced as we are ... and we’ve been judging all of Paris by the Champs Élysées....”
“That doesn’t decide the thing that’s worrying me.... It doesn’t even help.... I wonder if this war and everything connected with it won’t change people back home.”
“So that they would tolerate—Andree?”
He nodded.
“Never—if they found out that Andree had violated their laws.”
“But you—what do you think about her?”
“Is that fair?”