Mrs. Lawrence colored, though she was smiling composedly enough. Edith was not smiling. He saw her anxious look over at her mother, as if expecting her to answer that, and yet—this was what her eyes made him think—secretly hoping she couldn't.
But Mrs. Lawrence maintained her manner of gracious, rather amused tolerance with an absurd hot-headedness, perversity, on his part. "Oh, come now, Deane," she laughed, "we're not going to get into an absurd discussion, are we?"
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lawrence," he retorted sharply, "but I don't think it an absurd discussion. I don't consider a thing that involves the happiness of as fine a human being as Ruth Holland an absurd thing to discuss!"
She laid down her work. "Ruth Holland," she began very quietly, "is a human being who selfishly—basely—took her own happiness, leaving misery for others. She outraged society as completely as a woman could outrage it. She was a thief, really,—stealing from the thing that was protecting her, taking all the privileges of a thing she was a traitor to. She was not only what we call a bad woman, she was a hypocrite. More than that, she was outrageously unfaithful to her dearest friend—to Edith here who loved and trusted her. Having no respect for marriage herself, she actually had the effrontery—to say nothing of the lack of fine feeling—to go to the altar with Edith the very night that she herself outraged marriage. I don't know, Deane, how a woman could do a worse thing than that. The most pernicious kind of woman is not the one who bears the marks of the bad woman upon her. It's the woman like Ruth Holland, who appears to be what she is not, who deceives, plays a false part. If you can't see that society must close in against a woman like that then all I can say, my dear Deane, is that you don't see very straight. You jeer about society, but society is nothing more than life as we have arranged it. It is an institution. One living within it must keep the rules of that institution. One who defies it—deceives it—must be shut out from it. So much we are forced to do in self-defence. We owe that to the people who are trying to live decently, to be faithful. Life, as we have arranged it, must be based on confidence. We have to keep that confidence. We have to punish a violation of it." She took up her sewing again. "Your way of looking at it is not a very large way, Deane," she concluded pleasantly.
Edith had settled back in her chair—accepting, though her eyes were grieving. It was that combination which, perhaps even more than the words of her mother, made it impossible for him to hold back.
"Perhaps not," he said; "not what you would call a large way of looking at it. But do you know, Mrs. Lawrence, I'm not sure that I care for that large way of looking at it. I'm not sure that I care a great deal about an institution that smothers the kindly things in people—as you are making this do in Edith. It sometimes occurs to me that life as we have arranged it is a rather unsatisfactory arrangement. I'm not sure that an arrangement of life which doesn't leave place for the most real things in life is going to continue forever. Ruth was driven into a corner and forced to do things she herself hated and suffered for—it was this same arrangement of life forced that on her, you know. You talk of marriage. But you must know there was no real marriage between Marion Averley and Stuart Williams. And I don't believe you can deny that there is a real marriage between him and Ruth Holland." He had risen and now moved a little toward the steps. "So you see I don't believe I care much for your 'society,' Mrs. Lawrence," he laughed shortly. "This looks to me like a pretty clear case of life against society—and I see things just straight enough that life itself strikes me as rather more important than your precious 'arrangement' of it!"
That did not bring the color to Mrs. Lawrence's face; there seemed no color at all there when Deane finished speaking. She sat erect, her hands folded on her sewing, looking at him with strangely bright eyes. When she spoke it was with a certain metallic pleasantness. "Why, very well, Deane," she said; "one is at perfect liberty to choose, isn't one? And I think it quite right to declare one's self, as you have just done, that we may know who is of us and who is not." She smiled—a smile that seemed definitely to shut him out.
He looked at Edith; her eyes were down; he could see that her lips trembled. "Good-by," he said.
Mrs. Lawrence bowed slightly and took up her sewing.
"Good-by, Edith," he added gently.