ourt:
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 t