tely 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 marriag