It was just possible that she
had been thinking over what I had said, and that some of the doubts I
had suggested were beginning to disturb her perfect security.
After dinner she brought the conversation round to those social laws
which govern our lives arbitrarily. I did not see what she was driving
at, neither did the good old Bishop, who was one of the party, nor a
lawyer who was also present.
"You want to know something," said the latter. "What is it? You must
state your case clearly."
"I want to know if a thing can be legally right and morally wrong,"
Ideala answered.
"Of course not," the Bishop rashly asserted.
"That depends," the lawyer said, cautiously.
"If I signed a contract," Ideala explained, "and found out afterwards
that those who induced me to become a party to it had kept me in
ignorance of the most important clause in it, so that I really did not
know to what I was committing myself, would you call that a moral
contract?"
"I should say that people had not dealt uprightly with you," the Bishop
answered; "but there might be nothing in the clause to which you could
object.
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