“You don’t believe in the old-fashioned woman.”
“She’s still as much in fashion as she ever was. The old-fashionedest woman on record was Eve. She meddled and got her husband fired out of Paradise. And she never had any stage ambitions or asked for a vote or wore Paris clothes, but she wasn’t much of a success as a wife; and as a mother all we know of her home influence was that one of her sons killed the other and got driven into the wilderness. You can’t do much worse than that. Even if Eve had been an actress and gone on the road, her record couldn’t have been much worse, could it?”
Bret was boxing heavily and sleepily with a contemptuous patience. “You think women ought to be allowed to go gadding about wherever they please?”
“Of course I do! What’s the good of virtue that is due to being in jail? We know that men are more honest, more decent, more idealistic, more romantic, than women. Why? Because we have liberty. Because we have ourselves to blame for our rottenness. Because we’ve got nobody to hide behind. The reason so many women are such liars and gossips and so merciless to one another is because they are so penned in, because all the different kinds of women are expected to live just the same way after they are married. But some of them are bad mothers because they have no outlet for their genius. Some of them would be better wives if they had more liberty.”
Bret was entirely unconvinced. “You’re not trying to tell me that the stage is better than the average village?”
“No, but I think it’s as good. There will never be any lack of sin. But the sin that goes on in harems and jails and hide-bound communities is worse than the sin of free people busily at work in the splendid fields of art and science and literature and drama and commerce.
“I think Sheila belongs to the public. I don’t see why she couldn’t be a better wife and a better mother for being an eminent artist. And I like you, Bret, so much. You’re as decent a fellow at heart as anybody I know. I hate to have it you, of all men, that’s crushing Sheila’s soul out of her. I hate to think that I introduced you to her. And I let you cut me out.
“She wouldn’t have loved me if she’d married me, but, by the Lord Harry! her name would be a household word in all the homes in the country instead of just one.”
Vickery dropped to a divan and lay outstretched, exhausted with his oration. Bret sat with his lips pursed and his fingers gabled in long meditation. At length he spoke:
“I’m not such a brute as you think, ’Gene. I don’t want to sacrifice anybody to myself, least of all the woman I idolize. If Sheila wants to leave me and go back, I’ll not hinder her. I couldn’t if I wanted to. There’s no law that enables a man to get out an injunction against his wife going on the stage. If she wants to go, why doesn’t she?”