simply
bugaboos: divine orders, hells, heavens, purgatories, moral
sanctions--all the wild insanity, in two words, that had made our
wretched lives even less worth living than they could and should be!"

"_Should?_ Why _should_?" asked Phil. "Granting your universe, who gives
a negligible damn for a little discomfort more or less?"

"I do!" Maltby asserted. "I want all the comfort I can get; and I could
get far more in a world of clear-seeing, secular egotists than I can in
this mixed mess of superstitious, sentimental idealists which we choose
to call civilized society! Take just one minor practical illustration:
Say that some virgin has wakened my desire, and I hers. In a reasonable
society we could give each other a certain amount of passing
satisfaction. But do we do it? No. The virgin has been taught to believe
in a mystical, mischievous something, called Purity! To follow her
natural instinct would be a sin. If you sin and get caught on earth,
society will punish you; and if you don't get caught here, you'll
infallibly get caught hereafter--and then God will punish you. So the
virgin tortures herself and tortures me--unless I'm willing to marry
her, which would be certain to prove the worst of tortures for us both.
And there you are."

It was at this point that Susan spoke from her window.

"Pearl and papa weren't married, Mr. Phar; but they didn't get much fun
out of not being."

I confess that I felt a nervous chill start at the base of my spine and
shiver up toward my scalp. Even Phil, the man of Indian gravity, looked
for an instant perturbed.

"Susan!" I demanded sharply. "Have you been listening?"

"Mustn't I listen?" asked Susan. "Why not? Are you cross, Ambo?"

"The mischief's done," said Phil to me quietly; "better not make a point
of it."

"Please don't be cross, Ambo," Susan pleaded, slipping through the
window to the terrace and coming straight over to me. "Mr. Phar feels
just the way papa did about things; only papa couldn't talk so
splendidly. He had a very poor vocabulary"--"Vocabulary!" I
gasped--"except nasty words and swearing. But he meant just what Mr.
Phar means, _inside_."

Phil, as she ended, began to make strange choking noises and retired
suddenly into his handkerchief. Maltby put down his glass and stared at
Susan.

"Young person," he finally said, "you ought to be spanked! Don't you
know it's an unforgivable sin to spy on your elders!"

"But you don't believe in sin," re