"She's doing a tremendous work down town. She is the Mission. The superintendent and nurses idolize her. I was questioning her mother about it. Una has a way with her. The women that come there have to be handled carefully, it seems. I'm afraid they're a bad lot, though Una won't talk about 'em. She says I wouldn't understand. I suppose I wouldn't. I've never learned much about women yet, Roger. Funny, too. They seem so easy to understand, and yet they're not. It's the men that bring the women down—ruin them, but I can't see why it couldn't just as well be the other way about. Men are weak, too; why are the men always blamed? That's what I want to know, and what does it all mean? I suppose I'm awfully ignorant. Things go in one ear and out the other without making any impression. I lack something. It's the way I'm made. I've missed something, of the meaning of life, I suppose, because I've lived it all with so few people, you, Una, Uncle Jack—Flynn and the boys—"
"And Marcia," I put in suggestively.
He ignored my remark.
"Most chaps I've met seem to take so much of my knowledge for granted. The boys at Flynn's puzzled me, their strange phrases, hinting at hidden vices, but I wasn't going to question them. It's up to you, Roger. I want to know. What is this threat to Una's reputation when Marcia tells of our meeting here alone?"
As I remained resolutely silent, Jerry got up and paced with long strides up and down before me.
"Why shouldn't she and I meet here alone if we want to? And why these absurd restrictions surrounding the life of girls? I've accepted them, as I accept my morning coffee, because they're there. But what do they mean? I know that a girl is more delicate than a boy, a being to be sheltered and cared for; that seems natural. I accept that. But it goes too far. Una does what she pleases. Why shouldn't she? What is the meaning of unconventional morality? And why unconventional? Is morality so vague a term that there can be any sort of doubt as to its real meaning? And is Una any the less moral because she chooses to be unconventional? Una! I'd stake my life on her morality and innate refinement. No girl sacrifices her youth in the interests of others less fortunate than herself without being fine clear through. Then what did Marcia mean? And what could Una mean when she said her reputation was in danger? The very thought of my having harmed her, even by imputation, in the minds of others makes me desperately unhappy. And what, what on earth could Marcia suspect of me or of Una to place us both in so false a light? What could Marcia mean in speaking in that way about Una's visit here when she herself came—" He bit the word off abruptly and came to a stop. Some instinct—some baser instinct that Marcia was a part of, made frankness impossible. I could have finished his sentence for him but I didn't. Instead, I rose suddenly to a sitting posture, my tongue loosened.
"Bah!" I muttered. "The spleen of a jealous woman; it stops nowhere—at nothing!"
"But what was there in the story," he persisted, "to cause so much tension? I felt it in the air, Roger. It was in the looks of those about me, in Una's face. She was troubled. I had to speak."
"You did well, Jerry. You had to speak—to defend her—"
"Against what?"