dignified and smiling champion against the innovator,
the over-critical and the young. He had never rebelled before. He was so
astonished at the violence of his own objection that he lapsed from
defiance to an incredulous examination of his own novel attitude. "It's
not _true_ marriage I object to," he told himself. "It's this marriage
like a rat trap, alluring and scarcely unavoidable, so that in we all
go, and then with no escape--unless you tear yourself to rags. No
escape...."

It came to him that there was at least one way out for Lady Harman: _Sir
Isaac might die!_ ...

He pulled himself up presently, astonished and dismayed at the
activities of his own imagination. Among other things he had wondered if
by any chance Lady Harman had ever allowed her mind to travel in this
same post-mortem direction. At times surely the thing must have shone
upon her as a possibility, a hope. From that he had branched off to a
more general speculation. How many people were there in the world, nice
people, kind people, moral and delicate-minded people, to whom the death
of another person means release from that inflexible barrier--possibilities
of secretly desired happiness, the realization of crushed and forbidden
dreams? He had a vision of human society, like the vision of a night
landscape seen suddenly in a lightning flash, as of people caught by
couples in traps and quietly hoping for one another's deaths.
"Good Heavens!" said Mr. Brumley, "what are we coming to," and
got up in his railway compartment--he had it to himself--and walked up
and down its narrow limits until a jolt over a point made him suddenly
sit down again. "Most marriages are happy," said Mr. Brumley, like a man
who has fallen into a river and scrambles back to safety. "One mustn't
judge by the exceptional cases....

"Though of course there are--a good many--exceptional cases." ...

He folded his arms, crossed his legs, frowned and reasoned with
himself,--resolved to dismiss post-mortem speculations--absolutely.

He was not going to quarrel with the institution of marriage. That was
going too far. He had never been able to see the beginnings of reason in
sexual anarchy, never. It is against the very order of things. Man is a
marrying animal just as much as he was a fire-making animal; he goes in
pairs like mantel ornaments; it is as natural for him to marry and to
exact and keep good faith--if need be with a savage jealousy, as it is
for him to have lobes