“To Peter Cheever?”
“Yes.”
“Whew! Say, Doctor, that's going it pretty strong.”
“I do not care to discuss the sacraments with you in your present humor.”
“Did you read the trial of that woman last week who killed her husband and was acquitted? Mrs. What's-her-name? You must have read it.”
“I pay little attention to the newspaper scandals.”
“You ought to—they're what make life what it is. Anyway, this woman had a husband who turned out bad. He was a grafter and a gambler, a drunkard and a brute. He beat her and their five children horribly, and finally she divorced him. The law gave her her freedom in five minutes and there was no fuss about it, because she was poor, and the newspapers have no room for poor folks' marriage troubles—unless they up and kill somebody.
“Well, this woman was getting along all right when some good religious people got at her about the sin of her divorce and the broken sacrament, and they kept at her till finally she consented to remarry her husband—for the children's sake! There was great rejoicing by everybody—except the poor woman. After the remarriage he returned to his old ways and began to beat her again, and finally she emptied a revolver into him.”
“Horrible, horrible!”
“Wasn't it? The jury disagreed on the first trial. But on the second the churchpeople who persuaded her to remarry him went on the stand and confessed—or perhaps you would say, boasted—that they persuaded her to remarry him. And then she was acquitted. And that's why the civil law has always had to protect people from—”