gulate our
passions or they will master us, stifle what is really good in us.
My solution of this problem which I am so sick of discussing.... But
let's finish with it while we are about it--my solution is that the
State and the Community should do their utmost to encourage,
subsidize, reward early marriages; and at the same time facilitate
in a reasonable degree divorce. Apply both these remedies and you
would go far to wipe out prostitution, which I think perfectly
horrible--I--I should like to penalize it. Perhaps it is the Irish
ascetic in my constitution. A good many early marriages might be
failures. Well then, at the end of ten years these should be
dissolvable, with proper provision made for the children. I think
many a couple if they knew that after a time and without scandal
their partnership could be dissolved wouldn't, when the time came,
want it. While on the other hand if you made the tie not
everlastingly binding, young people--especially if they hadn't to
trouble about means--would get married without hesitation or delay.
I should not only encourage that, but I should give every woman a
heavy bonus for bringing a living child into the world.... Now let's
talk of something else. When are you going to take me to Louvain?"

* * * * *

They went to Louvain a few days later and Vivie's newly awakened
senses for the beautiful in art revelled in the glorious
architecture, so much of which was afterwards wrecked in the War.

Walking beneath the planes in a narrow street between monastic
buildings, they descried a gaunt, stately figure of a Father
Superior of some great Order. "There!" said Mrs. Warren; "that's
him, that's your father." They quickened their pace and were
presently alongside him. He flashed his great, grey eagle eyes for a
contemptuous second on the face of Mrs. Warren, who was all of a
tremble and could not meet the gaze. Vivie, he scarcely glanced at
as he strode towards a doorway which engulfed him, though the eyes
she had inherited would have met his unflinchingly.

* * * * *

David Williams duly visited Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Berlin,
Vienna, and Buda-Pest. Much of what he saw disgusted, even revolted,
him, but he found few of his fellow-countrywomen held captive and
crying to be delivered from a life of infamy. On his return to
England in the autumn of 1909, he published the results of his
observations; but they had v