“I read a little of everybody. But everything I read and see confirms my opinion that too much law is the curse of the world. Still, as I say, I'm not a lawmaker. I'm a law-manipulator. I've been wondering how long you would stand Cheever's scandalous behavior, and how long you could be convinced that you were helping the morals of the world by condoning and encouraging such immorality. Now that you've brought your troubles to my shop I'm going to help you if I can. But I don't want to get you or myself into the clutches of the law. You'll have to take care of your Church relations as best you can. They may turn you out, and you may roast on a gridiron hereafter, but that's your business. Personally, I think the only wicked thing I've ever heard of you doing was permitting your husband to board and lodge at your house while he carried on with that--woman. A harem divided against itself will not stand.” Charity was terrified by the man's profane view of sacred things, and she was horrified to learn that she could only release herself and Cheever from the shackles by a kind of trickery. She would have to make her escape somewhat as she had seen Houdini break from his ropes in the vaudevilles, by retiring behind dark curtains for a while. She felt guilty and craven whichever way she turned, and she imagined the revulsion with which the good pastor would regard her. Yet she was in a kind of mania to accept the scapegoat's burdens and be off into the wilderness. She was resolved to undergo everything for the sake of that poor child of Zada's hastening toward the world. She thanked Heaven she had no child of her own to complicate her duty. She understood why Cheever wanted to protect the name of the child's mother from the courts, and she was baffled by the situation. The lawyer, who was so flippant about the things the Church held so sacred, was like a priest in his abhorrence of any tampering with the letter of the law. She left his office for a conference with Cheever. She found at home that he had been telephoning to her. She called him up, and he came over at once. “I'm in a devil of a mess, Charity,” he said. “My lawyer refuses to help me give you evidence, and Zada--Miss L'Etoile--has developed a peculiar streak of obstinacy. She is determined that no other woman shall be named as the--er--co-respondent. She would rather be named herself. She says everybody knows about our--er--relations, anyway; and she doesn't care if they do.” Zada's character and her career had rendered her as contemptuous of public disapproval as any zealot of a loftier cause than love. There was a kind of barbaric insolence in her passion that Charity could not help admiring a little. She felt a whit ashamed of her own timidities and delicacies. The trouble with these proud defiers of the public, however, is that they do not ask the consent of the babies that are more or less implied in their superb amours.