“And if others are to be unhappy?”
“That is their affair. You don’t seem to have let that worry you much until now.”
“I never saw things so clearly before. There came a crisis, and I just plunged blindly. I have a horror of doing that again.”
“But I don’t think you’ll ever mind making a fool of yourself, René. You never did,” said Cathleen.
“Perhaps not, my dear, but I should hate to make a fool of you.”
“Everyone,” said Lotta, “makes mistakes. It isn’t everyone who will admit them. Once they are admitted they often turn out extremely profitable. Really I don’t see that you two need have any but financial anxiety, and that is easily surmounted. Marriage? Neither of you has a scrap of conventional religion. You can’t possibly be worried by scruples. Really the marriage laws of this country are in such a mess that it has become almost a duty for decent people to transgress them. They won’t be altered in our time, so there is nothing for it but to disregard them. You have quite enough real difficulties to face without troubling yourselves about artificial ones. A few virtuous people won’t know you? What are they to you or you to them?”
“It all comes back,” said Cathleen, “to that girl.”
“She took her risks. She knew that. They have courage, some of those girls.”
“Is courage,” asked René, “all that is necessary?”
“I think so. It is only lack of courage that has made rules of conduct and religious maxims and precepts—crutches and props. We’re all very stupid at conduct, but if we live by rule and habit there is no hope of our getting any better.”