“So carefully brought up as she has been!” the mother went on. “But that’s all over,” she added quickly, probably recalling her letter to me. “The thing now is to see what can be done? You will help, won’t you? You must know of some place in Paris where she could go?”
Odd how all doctors are supposed to know this, and odder, perhaps, how naturally even the most insular and irreconcilable of the censors of France turn in these times of despair to that deplorable country!
“Surely you need not exile the girl?” I said.
“The scandal would be bound to leak out at home,” she replied. “Besides, there are her sisters to think of. They must not be contaminated.”
“They don’t know, then?”
“Not yet. Certainly not.”
“She is still with us.”
“Then,” I said, “I should imagine that her sisters do know. And in any case, why contamination? They need not be corrupted by the knowledge. It might make them the more understanding, the more merciful.”
“Don’t you blame her?” Mrs. Stratton asked, as a kind of challenge.