“I see!” said Andrew. “Is breakfast over?”
It was not, and after a brief toilet he sat down to enjoy it with his family. He felt that he rather liked Miss Franklin.
“Nothing clinging and hyperfeminine about her!” he thought. “A man could make a friend of a girl like that.”
He decided to study her. Now that he was free and couldn’t be misunderstood, he had decided to make a comprehensive study of woman in general. He knew that there were points about them that he didn’t understand. He couldn’t really generalize upon the effects of marriage without a better knowledge of females—he admitted that. Why not, he asked himself, begin with this interesting specimen?
“What is the Franklin method?” he asked her.
“It’s not really a method at all,” she said. “It would be better to call it a theory. It’s simply nature and art, hand in hand. I don’t believe in directing or controlling a child. I simply help it along the road it indicates itself. My mission is solely to point out beauty to it.”
“That’s likely to make it very much more difficult for them to become accustomed to discipline and self-restraint when they’re old enough to be held responsible.”
“But, you see, I don’t believe either in discipline or self-restraint, in children or in adults. The natural impulses are sufficient. No, Dr. Nature implants in us only right and beautiful desires. I look upon self-restraint as superfluous, if not absolutely wrong, in a wholesome person.”
“Social interdependence requires—” Andrew began.
“We shouldn’t interdepend. We should each be a law unto himself. Let us be healthy, in mind and in body; then let desire be the sole rule, the sole conscience. Personally, I know that if I want to do a[Pg 6] thing, it is right to do it. If I want to have a thing, it is a right thing for me to have.”