How had it come about that so many people agreed on this single point, that it was good and necessary to marry one woman and cleave to her until death?
He did not know.

It was not for him to bother about the subtleties of evolution, which even then was being noised abroad, or to ferret out the curiosities of history in connection with this matter.

He had no time.

Suffice it that the vagaries of temperament and conditions with which he came into immediate contact proved to him that there was great dissatisfaction with that idea.

People did not cleave to each other until death; and in thousands of cases where they did, they did not want to.