t, it was so
bright, so mobile, so variously and easily true to its law. In the back
of our minds we both had a very definite belief that making love is full
of joyous, splendid, tender, and exciting possibilities, and we had to
discuss why we shouldn't be to the last degree lovers.

Now, what I should like to print here, if it were possible, in all the
screaming emphasis of red ink, is this: that the circumstances of my
upbringing and the circumstances of Isabel's upbringing had left not a
shadow of belief or feeling that the utmost passionate love between
us was in itself intrinsically WRONG. I've told with the fullest
particularity just all that I was taught or found out for myself
in these matters, and Isabel's reading and thinking, and the fierce
silences of her governesses and the breathless warnings of teachers, and
all the social and religious influences that had been brought to bear
upon her, had worked out to the same void of conviction. The code had
failed with us altogether. We didn't for a moment consider anything but
the expediency of what we both, for all our quiet faces and steady eyes,
wanted most passionately to do.

Well, here you have the state of mind of whole brigades of people, and
particularly of young people, nowadays. The current morality hasn't
gripped them; they don't really believe in it at all. They may render
it lip-service, but that is quite another thing. There are scarcely any
tolerable novels to justify its prohibitions; its prohibitions do, in
fact, remain unjustified amongst these ugly suppressions. You may, if
you choose, silence the admission of this in literature and current
discussion; you will not prevent it working out in lives. People come up
to the great moments of passion crudely unaware, astoundingly unprepared
as no really civilised and intelligently planned community would let any
one be unprepared. They find themselves hedged about with customs
that have no organic hold upon them, and mere discretions all generous
spirits are disposed to despise.

Consider the infinite absurdities of it! Multitudes of us are trying
to run this complex modern community on a basis of "Hush" without
explaining to our children or discussing with them anything about
love and marriage at all. Doubt and knowledge creep about in enforced
darknesses and silences. We are living upon an ancient tradition which
everybody doubts and nobody has ever analysed. We affect a tremendous
and cultivated s