Mrs. Peekin. (A dowdily-dressed, untidy woman, but the face is sweet and tender.) Ah, Mr. Chilvers, if you could only hear the stories that I have heard from dying lips.
Geoffrey. Very pitiful, my dear lady. And, alas, only too old. But there are others. It would not be fair to blame always the man.
Annys. (Unnoticed, drawn by the subject, she has risen and come down.) Perhaps not. But the punishment always falls on the woman. Is that quite fair?
Geoffrey. (He is irritated at Annys’s incursion into the discussion.) My dear Annys, that is Nature’s law, not man’s. All man can do is to mitigate it.
Peekin. That is all we ask. The suffering, the shame, must always be the woman’s. Surely that is sufficient.
Geoffrey. What do you propose?
Miss Borlasse. (In her deep, fierce tones.) That all children born out of wedlock should be a charge upon the rates.
Miss Ricketts. (A slight, fair, middle-aged woman, with a nervous hesitating manner.) Of course, only if the mother wishes it.
Geoffrey. (The proposal staggers him. But the next moment it inspires him with mingled anger and amusement.) My dear, good people, have you stopped for one moment to consider what the result of your proposal would be?
Peekin. For one thing, Mr. Chilvers, the adding to the populace of healthy children in place of the stunted and diseased abortions that is all that these poor women, out of their scanty earnings, can afford to present to the State.