iii

When the two men were in the smoking room, and deep down in comfortable armchairs, with large and delicious cigars, they spoke no more of business or the world at large. Gaythorpe had been married for a quarter of a century, and he had three boys in whose progress he took deep interest. It was of the boys that he spoke—Cyril, who had left Oxford and was devoting himself to archæology; Roland, who was still at the University; and Alistair, who was at Marlborough. Of Mrs. Gaythorpe he for some time said nothing. But at last he mentioned her.

"D'you know we've been married twenty-five years?" he demanded. "I was thirty-five, and now I'm sixty. You're thirty-seven, and unmarried. You ought to marry soon—before you're forty, because otherwise you won't enjoy your children as I've done. It's a point to bear in mind."

Edgar slightly frowned.

"I shan't marry now," he said. Gaythorpe laughed, a sudden chuckling old man's full laugh.

"By Jove, that's a dangerous thing to say!" he protested. "It's the most dangerous and suspicious remark in the world. I don't think you'll escape marriage. Some young fly-away will make up her mind to settle down; and you'll be pleasantly surprised to find yourself happily married."

"A fly-away?" Edgar raised his brows. "That sounds alarming. I suppose on the principle of the reformed rake. However, I've got an open mind. I admit that I want children; but as far as I can see the people I know don't have them."

"What a sterile crew you must know."

"No. Just platonic."

Gaythorpe smiled at the sarcasm.

"What is the general length of the childless marriage?" he asked. "The average."

"I haven't noticed. I don't know. A couple of years? Five years? At any rate, I see no point in the ceremony. But the thing arises from excessive individualism among women; and I don't see any way out of it. The only justification of the man who insists on children is his wife's love; and if the wives are fuller of self-love I can't see why they should be forced to undergo the pains of childbirth."

"My dear Edgar," said Gaythorpe. "Don't be sentimental. The people who most acutely feel the pains of childbirth are sentimental men. That a woman should suffer great physical pain for twenty-four hours, and a good deal of nervous distress for some time before her delivery, perhaps two or three times in the course of her life, is no reason why (if she's reasonably robust) she shouldn't have children. If there's an exaggerated fear of physical pain, or a great deal of egotism, in the woman you want to marry, call the whole thing off at once."

Edgar was faintly irritated.

"You can't dictate nowadays," he said. "That's past. Women have got to be treated—the women that one could marry, I mean—as equals. They've got to have an opportunity of living to the full extent of their powers."

"Well," said Gaythorpe, very deliberately. "I'm going to say something you'll dislike. I'm going to say that no woman who has any inclination to love you will thank you for treating her as an equal. She'll think it a weakness in you. She won't understand it. Women are so constituted that they associate consideration with indifference."

"You were talking a little while ago about generalisations," murmured Edgar.

"Perhaps I was. But what I say is true."

"You leave out of account," said Edgar, "in your old-fashioned conceptions,—the fact than an individual woman is always—in spite of her sex—exactly what an individual man is. She's always first of all a human being."

"Sometimes," responded Gaythorpe, with an excessively benevolent air; "sometimes, do you know, I'm very strongly disposed to question whether a woman can properly be regarded as a human being at all."