So I managed it all; as I have done with such-like matters before." "Ah," said I, "no doubt you wanted to keep them out of the Divorce Court: but I suppose it often has to settle such matters." "Then you suppose nonsense," said he.

"I know that there used to be such lunatic affairs as divorce-courts: but just consider; all the cases that came into them were matters of property quarrels: and I think, dear guest," said he, smiling, "that though you do come from another planet, you can see from the mere outside look of our world that quarrels about private property could not go on amongst us in our days." Indeed, my drive from Hammersmith to Bloomsbury, and all the quiet happy life I had seen so many hints of; even apart from my shopping, would have been enough to tell me that "the sacred rights of property," as we used to think of them, were now no more.

So I sat silent while the old man took up the thread of the discourse again, and said: "Well, then, property quarrels being no longer possible, what remains in these matters that a court of law could deal with?
Fancy a court for enforcing a contract of passion or sentiment! If such a thing were needed as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the enforcement of contract, such a folly would do that for us." He was silent again a little, and then said: "You must understand once for all that we have changed these matters; or rather, that our way of looking at them has changed, as we have changed within the last two hundred years.

We do not deceive ourselves, indeed, or believe that we can get rid of all the trouble that besets the dealings between the sexes.

We know that we must face the unhappiness that comes of man and woman confusing the relations between natural passion, and sentiment, and the friendship which, when things go well, softens the awakening from passing illusions: but we are not so mad as to pile up degradation on that unhappiness by engaging in sordid squabbles about livelihood and position, and the power of tyrannising over the children who have been the results of love or lust." Again he paused awhile, and again went on: "Calf love, mistaken for a heroism that shall be lifelong, yet early waning into disappointment; the inexplicable desire that comes on a man of riper years to be the all-in- all to some one woman, whose ordinary human kindness and human beauty he has idealised into superhuman perfection, and made the one object of his desire; or lastly the reasonable longing of a strong and thoughtful man to become the most intimate friend of some beautiful and wise woman, the very type of the beauty and glory of the world which we love so well,--as we exult in all the pleasure and exaltation of spirit which goes with these things, so we set ourselves to bear the sorrow which not unseldom goes with them also; remembering those lines of the ancient poet (I quote roughly from memory one of the many translations of the nineteenth century): 'For this the Gods have fashioned man's grief and evil day That still for man hereafter might be the tale and the lay.' Well, well, 'tis little likely anyhow that all tales shall be lacking, or all sorrow cured." He was silent for some time, and I would not interrupt him.