"What did Edith agree with you about?" asked Miss Grantham.
"I'm not sure that I did really agree with her," interpolated Edith.
"Oh, about morals," said Dodo. "I said that a man's morals did not matter in ordinary social life. That they did not come into the question at all."
"No, I don't think I do agree with you," said Edith. "All social life is a degree of intimacy, and you said yourself that you wouldn't get under the influence of an immoral man—in other words, you wouldn't be intimate with him."
"Oh, being intimate hasn't anything to do with being under a man's influence," said Dodo. "I'm very intimate with lots of people. Jack, for instance, but I'm not under his influence."
"Then you think it doesn't matter whether society is composed of people without morals?" said Edith.
"I think it's a bad thing that morals should deteriorate in any society," said Dodo; "but I don't think that society should take cognisance of the moral code. Public opinion don't touch that. If a man is a brute, he won't be any better for knowing that other people disapprove of him. If he knows that, and is worth anything at all, it will simply have the opposite effect on him. He very likely will try to hide it; but that doesn't make it any better. A whited sepulchre is no better than a sepulchre unwhitened. You must act by your own lights. If an action doesn't seem to you wrong nothing in the world will prevent your doing it, if your desire is sufficiently strong. You cannot elevate tone by punishing offences. There are no fewer criminals since the tread-mill was invented and Botany Bay discovered."
"You mean that there would be no increase in crime if the law did not punish?"
"I mean that punishment is not the best way of checking crime, though that is really altogether a different question. You won't check immorality by dealing with it as a social crime."
There was a short silence, broken only by the whispering of the wind in the fir trees. Then on the stillness came a light, rippling laugh. Dodo got out of her chair, and plucked a couple of roses from a bush near her.