If you want to do away with marriage, why don't you say so ?" "But I don't," said Shelton, "is it likely?
Why, I'm going--" He stopped without adding the words "to be married myself," for it suddenly occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and philosophic in the world.

"All I can say is," he went on soberly, "that you can't make a horse drink by driving him.

Generosity is the surest way of tightening the knot with people who've any sense of decency; as to the rest, the chief thing is to prevent their breeding." Halidome smiled.
"You're a rum chap," he said.
Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.
"I tell you what"-- for late at night a certain power of vision came to him--"it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society; it's nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water." But Halidome remained unruffled.
"All right," he said, "call it that.

I don't see why I should go to the wall; it wouldn't do any good." "You admit, then," said Shelton, "that our morality is the sum total of everybody's private instinct of self-preservation ?" Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.
"I don't know," he began, "that I should quite call it that--" But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified posture of his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead, the perfectly humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton as ridiculous.
"Hang it, Hall" he cried, jumping from his chair, "what an old fraud you are! I'll be off." "No, look here!" said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had appeared upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: "You're quite wrong--" "Very likely; good-night, old chap!" Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him.

It was Saturday, and he passed many silent couples.