rth feels for me! No, all my life I have
been misunderstood, misjudged, condemned! Let it be so till the end!
Dolly, come and help me pack!

[_Exit_. MATT _goes up to table and takes up proofs of_ PROFESSOR'S
_book and looks through them._

_Dolly._ You're really too severe with poor Renie----

_Prof._ I am not severe. I simply register the inevitable sentence of
the husband upon the wife who misconducts herself!

_Dolly._ Misconducts herself! She has merely had a little harmless
flirtation----

_Prof._ In my wife a flirtation of this character [_pointing to letter
in his hand_] constitutes grave misconduct.

_Dolly._ But that's perfectly ridiculous! Why it might happen to any
woman! Dad, explain to him----

_Matt._ Professor, you're taking altogether a wrong view of this. Now
this case you were pointing out to me in your own book [_pointing to
proofs_]--Number forty-nine, Mrs. Copway. Remarkably handsome woman
too!--[_reading_] "The injustice and cruelty of condemning this poor
lady must be apparent to all." My dear Professor, before publishing this
book you'll have to modify your theory.

_Prof._ I cannot modify my theory. I have spent ten years in collecting
facts which prove it.

_Matt._ Then, pardon me, you must really look over Mrs. Sturgess's
little indiscretion.

_Prof._ That is equally impossible----

_Matt._ But you say that her action in receiving my nephew's letter was
entirely due to the activity of certain atoms in the gray matter of her
brain.

_Prof._ Undoubtedly that is so.

_Dolly._ Very well then, if her gray matter keeps on working wrong,
what's the use of blaming her? You say yourself there's no such thing as
free will----

_Prof._ Precisely, but I have always allowed that in the present low
moral and intellectual condition of the herd of mankind, free will is a
plausible working hypothesis.

_Dolly._ But it doesn't work! Free will won't work at all! Look at my
own case! Do you suppose I should go on all my life having bills if I
could help myself? [_Catching_ MATT'S _eye, who looks at her gravely and
holds up his finger._] Never mind my bills! Do make him see how wrong
and absurd it is to punish poor Renie when there's no such thing as free
will!

_Matt._ Dolly's right! She's only saying what you have so admirably laid
down here. My dear Professor, you cannot possibly publish this book!

_Prof._ But it has been announced! I must publish it.

_Matt._ You cannot. Re