that a really civilized community would entertain.
But there are practical difficulties. Marriage is not simply a sexual
union, it is an economic one of a peculiarly inseparable sort,--and
there are the children. And jealousy! Of course so far as economics
went, a kind of marriage settlement might meet most of the difficulties,
and as for the children, Mr. Brumley was no longer in that mood of
enthusiastic devotion to children that had made the birth of George
Edmund so tremendous an event. Children, alone, afforded no reason for
indissoluble lifelong union. Face the thing frankly. How long was it
absolutely necessary for people to keep a home together for their
children? The prosperous classes, the best classes in the community,
packed the little creatures off to school at the age of nine or ten. One
might overdo--we were overdoing in our writing nowadays
this--philoprogenitive enthusiasm....

He found himself thinking of George Meredith's idea of Ten Year
Marriages....

His mind recoiled to Sir Isaac's pillowed-up possession. What flimsy
stuff all this talk of altered marriage was! These things did not even
touch the essentials of the matter. He thought of Sir Isaac's thin lips
and wary knowing eyes. What possible divorce law could the wit of man
devise that would release a desired woman from that--grip? Marriage was
covetousness made law. As well ask such a man to sell all his goods and
give to the poor as expect the Sir Isaacs of this world to relax the
matrimonial subjugation of the wife. Our social order is built on
jealousy, sustained by jealousy, and those brave schemes we evolve in
our studies for the release of women from ownership,--and for that
matter for the release of men too,--they will not stand the dusty heat
of the market-place for a moment, they wilt under the first fierce
breath of reality. Marriage and property are the twin children of man's
individualistic nature; only on these terms can he be drawn into
societies....

Mr. Brumley found his little scheme for novelties in marriage and
divorce lying dead and for the most part still-born in his mind; himself
in despair. To set to work to alter marriage in any essential point was,
he realized, as if an ant should start to climb a thousand feet of
cliff. This great institution rose upon his imagination like some
insurmountable sierra, blue and sombre, between himself and the life of
Lady Harman and all that he desired. There might be a certain amoun