"You've struck the exact word. Since we met, I've given you several of my seven lives, but there's one life a man can't pass on to his son—his life with relation to women. He can only give, as you said, a perspective."
Leighton chose a cigar carefully and lit it.
"Formerly woman had but one mission," he went on. "She arrived at it when she arrived at womanhood. The fashionable age for marriage was fifteen. Civilization has pushed it along to twenty-five. Those ten cumulative years have put a terrific strain on woman. On the whole, she has stood it remarkably well. But as modernity has reduced our animalism, it has increased our fundamental immorality and put a substantial blot on woman's mission as a mission. Woman has had to learn to dissemble charmingly, but in the bottom of her heart she has never believed that her mission is intrinsically shameful. That's why every woman feels her special case of sinning is right—until she gets caught. Do you follow me?"
"I think so," said Lewis.
"Well, if you've followed me, you begin to realize why a superfluity of women threatens conventional life. There are an awful lot of women in this town, Lew."
Leighton rose to his feet and started walking up and down, his hands clasped behind him, his head dropped.
"I haven't been feeding you on all these generalities just to kill time. A generality would be worth nothing if it weren't for its exceptions. Women are remarkable for the number of their exceptions. You are crossing a threshold into a peculiarly lax section and age of woman. I want you to believe and to remember that the world still breeds noble and innocent women."
Leighton stopped, threw up his head, and fixed Lewis with his eyes.
"Do you know what innocence is? Ask the average clergyman to describe innocence to you, and when he gets through, think a bit, take off the tinsel words with which he has decked out his graven image, and you'll find what? Ignorance enshrined. Every clergy the world has seen has enshrined ignorance, and ignorance has no single virtue that a sound turnip does not share."
Leighton stopped and faced his son.