"You remember, Bernal, that night you went away —how you said there was no moral law under the sky for you but your own?"
He smiled, and above the noise of the train his voice came to her as his voice of old came above the noise of the years.
"Yes—Nance—that was right. No moral law but mine. I carried out my threat to make them all find their authority in me."
"Then you still believe yours is the only authority?"
"Yes; it sounds licentious and horrible, doesn't it; but there are two queer things about it—the first is that man quite naturally wishes to be decent, and the second is that, when he does come to rely wholly upon the authority within himself, he finds it a stricter disciplinarian than ever the decalogue was. One needs only ordinary good taste to keep the ten commandments— the moral ones. A man may observe them all and still be morally rotten! But it's no joke to live by one's own law, and yet that's all anybody has to keep him right, if we only knew it, Nance—barring a few human statutes against things like murder and keeping one's barber-shop open on the Sabbath—the ruder offenses which no gentleman ever wishes to commit.
"And must poor woman be ruled by her own God, too?"
"Why not?"
"Well, it's not so long ago that the fathers of the Church were debating in council whether she had a soul or not, charging her with bringing sin, sickness and death into the world."
"Exactly. St. John Damascene called her 'a daughter of falsehood and a sentinel of hell'; St. Jerome came in with 'Woman is the gate of the devil, the road to iniquity, the sting of the scorpion'; St. Gregory, I believe, considered her to have no comprehension of goodness; pious old Tertullian complimented her with corrupting those whom Satan dare not attack; and then there was St. Chrysostom—really he was much more charitable than his fellow Saints—it always seemed to me he was not only more humane but more human— more interested, you might say. You know he said, 'Woman is a necessary evil, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, a painted ill.' It always seemed to me St. Chrysostom had a past. But really, I think they all went too far. I don't know woman very well, but I suspect she has to find her moral authority where man finds his—within herself."
"You know what made me ask—a little woman in town came to see Allan not long ago to know if she mightn't leave her husband—she had what seemed to her sufficient reason."