“I won’t tell you. You don’t deserve to hear,” she said with dignity.
A brief silence.
“What do you mean by saying you poets made us?” she began again, pushing the ash-tray toward me.
“Well, you know, as a matter of fact people long ago didn’t believe you had any souls.”
“Rot!”
“I shouldn’t think of contradicting you, my dear Joan, but it’s a fact.”
“Oh, the Turks, and heathen like that.”
“Well, no—the Church. The Fathers of the Church, met in solemn council, remarked you had no souls. It was a long time ago, however.”
“They didn’t!”
“They did. They treated you as pretty dangerous little animals, with snake’s blood in you. Listen to this: ‘Chrysostom’—a very distinguished saint—‘only interpreted the general sentiment of the Fathers when he pronounced woman to be a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, a painted ill.’ You see you had found the way to the rouge-box even then.”