"That is the mistake you good women all make," said Evadne. "You set a detestably bad example. So long as women like you will forgive anything, men will do anything. You have it in your power to set up a high standard of excellence for men to reach in order to have the privilege of associating with you. There is this quality in men, that they will have the best of everything; and if the best wives are only to be obtained by being worthy of them, they will strive to become so. As it is, however, why should they? Instead of punishing them for their depravity, you encourage them in it by overlooking it; and besides," she added, "you must know that there is no past in the matter of vice. The consequences become hereditary, and continue from generation to generation." Again Mrs. Orton Beg felt herself checked. "Where did you hear all this, Evadne!" she asked, "I never heard it. I read--and I thought," she answered. "But I am only now beginning to understand," she added. "I suppose moral axioms are always the outcome of pained reflection. Knowledge cries to us in vain as a rule before experience has taken the sharp edge off our egotism--by experience, I mean the addition of some personal feeling to our knowledge." "I don't understand you in the least, Evadne," Mrs. Orton Beg replied. "Your husband was a good man," Evadne answered indirectly. "You have never thought about what a woman ought to do who has married a bad one--in an emergency like mine, that is. You think I should act as women have been always advised to act in such cases, that I should sacrifice myself to save that one man's soul. I take a different view of it. I see that the world is not a bit the better for centuries of self-sacrifice on the woman's part and therefore I think it is time we tried a more effectual plan. And I propose now to sacrifice the man instead of the woman." Mrs. Orton Beg was silent. "Have you nothing to say to me, auntie?" Evadne asked at last, caressingly. "I do not like to hear you talk so, Evadne. Every word you say seems to banish something--something from this room--something from my life to which I cling. I think it is my faith in love--and loving. You may be right, but yet--the consequences! the struggle, if we must resist! It is best to submit. It is better not to know." "It is easier to submit--yes; it is disagreeable to know," Evadne translated.