Pushed to this extremity, I could recall but a single instance,--but one man whose courage and generosity, in a case of the kind under discussion, had risen to the level of his crime. I related to her the story of his splendid and prolonged life, with its one blot of early sin, and its grace of practical repentance. And upon the other hand, I told her of the one distinguished modern woman, who has had the hardihood to face the world with her offenses in her hands, as one might say. "Are you not rather unjust to the woman?" she asked. "You speak of the man's acknowledgment of his sin as something fine, and you seem to regard hers as simply impudent." "Because of the vast difference between the moral attitude of the two," I rejoined. "He confessed his error and took his punishment with humility; she slaps society in the face, and tries to make her genius glorify her misdeeds." "Possibly society is to blame for that, by setting her at bay. If I have got the right idea about your society, it is as unrelenting to the one sex as it is indulgent to the other. Doubtless it was ready with open arms to receive back the offending, repentant man, but would it not have set its foot upon the woman's neck if she had given it the chance, if she had knelt in humility as he did? A tree bears fruit after its kind; so does a code of morals. Gentleness and forgiveness breed repentance and reformation, and harshness begets defiance." She added with a laugh, "What a spectacle your civilization would present if all the women who have sinned had the genius and the spirit of a Bernhardt!" "Or all the men had the magnanimity of a Franklin," I retorted. "True!" she said, and after a moment she continued, "I am not so great as the one, nor have I the 'effrontery' of the other. But it is not so much that I lack courage; it is rather, perhaps, a delicate consideration for, and concession to, the good order of society." I regarded her with amazement, and she smiled. "Really, it is true," she said. "I believe in social order and I pay respect to it--" "By concealing your own transgressions," I interpolated. "Well, why not? Suppose I and my cult--a very large class of eminently respectable sinners!--should openly trample upon this time-honored convention; the result would eventually be, no doubt, a moral anarchy. We have a very clear sense of our responsibility to the masses. We make the laws for their government, and we allow ourselves to seem to be governed by them also,--so that they may believe in them. We build churches and pay pew rent, though we do not much believe in the religious dogmas. And we leave off wine when we entertain temperance people." "But why do you do these things?" I asked; "to what end?"