ped laughing, settled himself to talk it out.

"Why wrong, Gerda? Superfluous, if you like; irrelevant, if you like; but
why wrong?"

"Because it's a fetter on what shouldn't be fettered. Love might stop.
Then it would be ugly."

"Oh very. One has to take that risk, like other risks. And love is
really more likely to stop, as I see it, if there's no contract in the
eyes of the world, if the two people know each can walk away from the
other, and is expected to, directly they quarrel or feel a little bored.
The contract, the legalisation--absurd and irrelevant as all legal
things are to anything that matters--the contract, because we're such
tradition-bound creatures, does give a sort of illusion of inevitability,
which is settling, so that it doesn't occur to the people to fly apart at
the first strain. They go through with it instead, and in nine cases out
of ten come out on the other side. In the tenth case they just have
either to make the best of it or to make a break.... Of course people
always _can_ throw up the sponge, even married people, if things are
insupportable. The door isn't locked. But there's no point, I think, in
having it swinging wide open."

"I think it _should_ be open," Gerda said. "I think people should be
absolutely free.... Take you and me. Suppose you got tired of me, or
liked someone else better, I think you ought to be able to leave me
without any fuss."

That was characteristic of both of them, that they could take their
own case theoretically without becoming personal, without lovers'
protestations to confuse the general issue.

"Well," Barry said, "I don't think I ought. I think it should be made as
difficult for me as possible. Because of the children. There are usually
children, of course. If I left you, I should have to leave them too. Then
they'd have no father. Or, if it were you that went, they'd have no
mother. Either way it's a pity, normally. Also, even if we stayed
together always and weren't married, they'd have no legal name. Children
often miss that, later on. Children of the school age are the most
conventional, hide-bound creatures. They'd feel ashamed before their
schoolfellows."

"I suppose they'd have my name legally, wouldn't they?"

"I suppose so. But they might prefer mine. The other boys and girls would
have their fathers', you see."

"Not all of them. I know several people who don't hold with marriage
either; there'd be all their children. And anyhow it's