to his ears and hair under his armpits. These
things jar with the dream perhaps; the gods on painted ceilings have no
such ties, acting beautifully by their very nature; and here on the
floor of the world one had them and one had to make the best of them....
Are we making the best of them? Mr. Brumley was off again. That last
thought opened the way to speculative wildernesses, and into these Mr.
Brumley went wandering with a novel desperate enterprise to find a kind
of marriage that would suit him.

He began to reform the marriage laws. He did his utmost not to think
especially of Lady Harman and himself while he was doing so. He would
just take up the whole question and deal with it in a temperate
reasonable way. It was so necessary to be reasonable and temperate in
these questions--and not to think of death as a solution. Marriages to
begin with were too easy to make and too difficult to break; countless
girls--Lady Harman was only a type--were married long before they could
know the beginnings of their own minds. We wanted to delay
marriage--until the middle twenties, say. Why not? Or if by the
infirmities of humanity one must have marriage before then, there ought
to be some especial opportunity of rescinding it later. (Lady Harman
ought to have been able to rescind her marriage.) What ought to be the
marriageable age in a civilized community? When the mind was settled
into its general system of opinions Mr. Brumley thought, and then
lapsed into a speculation whether the mind didn't keep changing and
developing all through life; Lady Harman's was certainly still doing
so.... This pointed to logical consequences of an undesirable sort....

(Some little mind-slide occurred just at this point and he found himself
thinking that perhaps Sir Isaac might last for years and years, might
even outlive a wife exhausted by nursing. And anyhow to wait for death!
To leave the thing one loved in the embrace of the moribund!)

He wrenched his thoughts back as quickly as possible to a disinterested
reform of the marriage laws. What had he decided so far? Only for more
deliberation and a riper age in marrying. Surely that should appeal even
to the most orthodox. But that alone would not eliminate mistakes and
deceptions altogether. (Sir Isaac's skin had a peculiar, unhealthy
look.) There ought in addition to be the widest facilities for divorce
possible. Mr. Brumley tried to draw up a schedule in his head of the
grounds for divorce