en unwilling to let him live his own life, but
desirous rather that he should live theirs. They loved him tyrannically,
on the condition that he should conform to all their prejudices. Though
full of affectionate kindness, they wished him always to dance to their
piping--a marionette of which they pulled the strings.

"What would you have me do?"

"Keep your word, James," answered his father.

"I can't, I can't! I don't understand how you can wish me to marry Mary
Clibborn when I don't love her. _That_ seems to me dishonourable."

"It would be nothing worse than a _mariage de convenance_," said Uncle
William. "Many people marry in that sort of way, and are perfectly
happy."

"I couldn't," said James. "That seems to me nothing better than
prostitution. It is no worse for a street-walker to sell her body to any
that care to buy."

"James, remember your mother is present."

"For God's sake, let us speak plainly. You must know what life is. One
can do no good by shutting one's eyes to everything that doesn't square
with a shoddy, false ideal. On one side I must break my word, on the
other I must prostitute myself. There is no middle way. You live here
surrounded by all sorts of impossible ways of looking at life. How can
your outlook be sane when it is founded on a sham morality? You think
the body is indecent and ugly, and that the flesh is shameful. Oh, you
don't understand. I'm sick of this prudery which throws its own
hideousness over all it sees. The soul and the body are one,
indissoluble. Soul is body, and body is soul. Love is the God-like
instinct of procreation. You think sexual attraction is something to be
ignored, and in its place you put a bloodless sentimentality--the vulgar
rhetoric of a penny novelette. If I marry a woman, it is that she may be
the mother of children. Passion is the only reason for marriage; unless
it exists, marriage is ugly and beastly. It's worse than beastly; the
beasts of the field are clean. Don't you understand why I can't marry
Mary Clibborn?"

"What you call love, James," said Colonel Parsons, "is what I call
lust."

"I well believe it," replied James, bitterly.

"Love is something higher and purer."

"I know nothing purer than the body, nothing higher than the divine
instincts of nature."

"But that sort of love doesn't last, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons,
gently. "In a very little while it is exhausted, and then you look for
something different in your wife. You loo