Well, it was done with. The effete morality of a printed book was no tie upon him. The New Freedom was his--the freedom to do as he would and possess what he desired. Yet after all it was an old religion, this of John's. It has had many names; but it has never wanted priests to preach and devotees to practise its very agreeable tenets.
John Arniston stamped with his foot as he came to this decision. The fog was clearing off the river. It was no more than a mere scum on the water. There was a rift above, straight up to the stars.
"No," he said, over and over, "I shall not give her up. It is preposterous. Yet my father believed it. He died with his hand on the old Bible, his finger in the leaves--my mother--"
"AND GOD SPAKE ALL THESE WORDS--." The sentence seemed to flash through the rift over the shot-tower--to tingle down from the stars.
There are no true perverts. When man strips him to the bare buff, he is of the complexion his mother bestowed upon him. When his life's card-castle, laboriously piled, tumbles ignominious, he is again of his mother's religion.
John Arniston stepped to the edge of the parapet. He looked over into the slow, swirling black water. It was a quick way that--but no--it was not to be his way. He looked at his watch. It was time to go to the office. He had an article to do. As well do that as anything. But first he would write a letter to her.
Shut in his room, his hand flying swiftly lest it should turn back in spite of him, John Arniston wrote a letter to Miriam Gale--a letter that was all one lie. He could not tell her the true reason why he would not go on the morrow. Who was he, that he should put himself in the attitude of being holier than Miriam Gale? It was certainly not because he did not wish to go--or that he thought it wrong. Simply, his father's calf-skin Bible barred the way, and he could no more pass over it than he could have trampled over his mother's body to his desire.
It was done. The letter was written. What was the particular excuse, invented fiercely at the moment, there is no use writing down here to cumber the page. John Arniston cheerfully gave himself over to the recording angel. Yet the ninth commandment is of equal interpretation, though it may be somewhat less clearly and tersely expressed than the seventh.