observe them all and still
be morally rotten! But it's no joke to live by one's own law, and yet
that's all anybody has to keep him right, if we only knew it,
Nance--barring a few human statutes against things like murder and
keeping one's barber-shop open on the Sabbath--the ruder offenses which
no gentleman ever wishes to commit.

"And must poor woman be ruled by her own God, too?"

"Why not?"

"Well, it's not so long ago that the fathers of the Church were debating
in council whether she had a soul or not, charging her with bringing
sin, sickness and death into the world."

"Exactly. St. John Damascene called her 'a daughter of falsehood and a
sentinel of hell'; St. Jerome came in with 'Woman is the gate of the
devil, the road to iniquity, the sting of the scorpion'; St. Gregory, I
believe, considered her to have no comprehension of goodness; pious old
Tertullian complimented her with corrupting those whom Satan dare not
attack; and then there was St. Chrysostom--really he was much more
charitable than his fellow Saints--it always seemed to me he was not
only more humane but more human--more interested, you might say. You
know he said, 'Woman is a necessary evil, a domestic peril, a deadly
fascination, a painted ill.' It always seemed to me St. Chrysostom had a
past. But really, I think they all went too far. I don't know woman very
well, but I suspect she has to find her moral authority where man finds
his--within herself."

"You know what made me ask--a little woman in town came to see Allan not
long ago to know if she mightn't leave her husband--she had what seemed
to her sufficient reason."

"I imagine Allan said 'no.'"

"He did. Would you have advised her differently?"

"Bless you, no. I'd advise her to obey her priest. The fact that she
consulted him shows that she has no law of her own. St. Paul said this
wise and deep thing: 'I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that
there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him that esteemeth anything
unclean, to him it is unclean!'"

"Then it lay in her own view of it. If she had felt free to go, she
would have done right to go."

"Naturally."

"Yet Allan talked to her about the sanctity of the home."

"I doubt if the sanctity of the home is maintained by keeping unwilling
mates together, Nance. I can imagine nothing less sanctified than a home
of that sort--peopled by a couple held together against the desire of
either or both. The willing mates need