their successors. Such rubbish! The Stevenages are as good as the
Antonines, I hope; and you are a Stevenage. But that was Andrew
all over. There you have the man! Always clever and unanswerable
when he was defending nonsense and wickedness: always awkward and
sullen when he had to behave sensibly and decently!

STEPHEN. Then it was on my account that your home life was broken
up, mother. I am sorry.

LADY BRITOMART. Well, dear, there were other differences. I
really cannot bear an immoral man. I am not a Pharisee, I hope;
and I should not have minded his merely doing wrong things: we
are none of us perfect. But your father didn't exactly do wrong
things: he said them and thought them: that was what was so
dreadful. He really had a sort of religion of wrongness just as
one doesn't mind men practising immorality so long as they own
that they are in the wrong by preaching morality; so I couldn't
forgive Andrew for preaching immorality while he practised
morality. You would all have grown up without principles, without
any knowledge of right and wrong, if he had been in the house.
You know, my dear, your father was a very attractive man in some
ways. Children did not dislike him; and he took advantage of it
to put the wickedest ideas into their heads, and make them quite
unmanageable. I did not dislike him myself: very far from it; but
nothing can bridge over moral disagreement.

STEPHEN. All this simply bewilders me, mother. People may differ
about matters of opinion, or even about religion; but how can
they differ about right and wrong? Right is right; and wrong is
wrong; and if a man cannot distinguish them properly, he is