Mrs. Winters submitted to the despotic rule of Dr. Winters for no such reason as this. She submitted because she liked it, and because she did not know that it was despotic. It saved her the exertion of making decisions for herself, and her conscience was always quite clear. "The Doctor will not let me," she had told the women when they had asked her to play for the Sunday services at the mission. "The Doctor thought it was too cold for me to go out," had been her explanation when on one occasion she had failed to appear at a concert where she had promised to play the accompaniments; and in time people ceased to ask her to do anything, her promises were so likely to be broken.
When the Suffrage agitators went to see her and tried to show her that she needed a vote, she answered all their arguments by saying, "I have such a good husband that these arguments do not apply to me at all"; and all their talk about spiritual independence and personal responsibility fell on very pretty, but very deaf, ears. The women said she was a hopeless case.
"I wonder," said one of the women afterwards in discussing her, "when Mrs. Winters presents herself at the heavenly gate and there is asked what she has done to make the world better, and when she has to confess that she has never done anything outside of her own house, and nothing there except agreeable things, such as entertaining friends who next week will entertain her, and embroidering 'insets' for corset-covers for dainty ladies who already have corset-covers enough to fill a store-window,--I wonder if she will be able to put it over on the heavenly doorkeeper that 'the Doctor would not let her.' If all I hear is true, Saint Peter will say, 'Who is this person you call the Doctor?' and when she explains that the Doctor was her husband, Saint Peter will say, 'Sorry, lady, we cannot recognize marriage relations here at all--it is unconstitutional, you know--there is no marrying or giving in marriage after you cross the Celestial Meridian. I turned back a woman this morning who handed in the same excuse--there seems to have been a good deal of this business of one person's doing the thinking for another on earth, but we can't stand for it here. I'm sorry, lady, but I can't let you in--it would be as much as my job is worth.'"