Everybody laughed and applauded as if something very funny had been said.
"Well, anyhow," I insisted, for I can be obstinate when a thing isn't clear to me, "if they both thought they were justified in calling themselves man and wife, and if the people in Russia thought so, too, why should we make any fuss about it?"
"Pardon me, Mrs. Grant," said Mrs. Blanderocks, suavely, "if I say that your words are very silly. In the first place, the Russians are barbarians, as we all know; and, in the next place, the law is the law, and the law says that a man may not have two wives. A man who does is a bigamist. A man who has a wife and yet lives with another woman is an adulterer. Pardon me for using such a word, but it was forced from me. Now, this man Gorky, who may be a very great genius for all I know—I never read any of his stuff—but he isn't above the law: not above the moral law anyhow, and the moral law is the same all over the world. He says he and his wife parted because they were unhappy together, which is a very flimsy excuse for immorality. Then he says that his wife is living now with a man she loves and is happy with."
"Which makes a bad matter worse," interposed Sarah Warner. "No one has any business to be happy in immorality."
"What is morality for," demanded the voice from the corner, "if it isn't to make people unhappy?"
Everybody screamed with laughter over that, and Mrs. Blanderocks went so far as to raise her eyebrows at Sarah Warner, who bit her lip to keep from smiling.
"But," said I, for I had been reading the papers, too, "he says the reason they were not divorced was because the Church would not permit it."
"If the laws of his country were opposed to this divorce," said Mrs. Blanderocks, triumphantly, "all the more reason why he should be ashamed of living with this actress in such an open, defiant way."
"The Church has nothing to do with divorces in this country," I said, "yet many of our best people are divorced."
"The law permits it," said Mrs. Blanderocks curtly.