"You know, of course, that I join issue with you there."
"You don't find it so?"
"God forbid!"
"Tell me," said the stranger eagerly, running his eye from Dudley's cultured face to his long nervous hands, "you ought to know—given a woman, pure, and good, and strong, could she go through it all unharmed?"
"Pure, and good, and strong," repeated Dudley reflectively. "Given a woman like that, you may safely send her through hell itself. I think the fundamental mistake of our civilisation has been educating women as if they were all run in one mould. She will get her eyes opened, of course, if she studies medicine, but some women never attain the possibilities of their nature in the shadow of convent walls. Frankly, I have no great fancy for artificially reared purity."
"Artificially reared!" exclaimed the other. "My dear sir, there are a few intermediate stages between the hothouse and the dunghill! If it were only art, or literature, or politics, or even science, but anatomy—the dissecting-room!"
"Well," said Dudley rather indignantly, his views developing as he spoke, "even anatomy, like most things, is as you make it. Many men take possession of a 'little city of sewers,' but I should think a pure and good woman might chance to find herself in the 'temple of the Holy Ghost.'"
His visitor was somewhat startled by this forcible language, and he did not answer for a moment. He seemed to be attentively studying the pattern of the carpet. Presently he looked full at Dudley, and spoke somewhat sharply.
"Knowing all you do, you think that possible?"
"Knowing all I do, I think that more than possible."