;
which we are not, perhaps, as yet fitted even to desire.
What, gentlemen, is the ethical position of marriage?
Have we outlived it?"

"Outlived it?" broke out Moon; "why, nobody's ever survived it!
Look at all the people married since Adam and Eve--and all
as dead as mutton."

"This is no doubt an inter-pellation joc'lar in its character,"
said Dr. Pym frigidly. "I cannot tell what may be Mr. Moon's
matured and ethical view of marriage--"

"I can tell," said Michael savagely, out of the gloom. "Marriage is a duel
to the death, which no man of honour should decline."

"Michael," said Arthur Inglewood in a low voice, "you MUST keep quiet."

"Mr. Moon," said Pym with exquisite good temper, "probably regards
the institution in a more antiquated manner. Probably he would make
it stringent and uniform. He would treat divorce in some great soul
of steel--the divorce of a Julius Caesar or of a Salt Ring Robinson--
exactly as he would treat some no-account tramp or labourer who
scoots from his wife. Science has views broader and more humane.
Just as murder for the scientist is a thirst for absolute destruction,
just as theft for the scientist is a hunger for monotonous acquisition,
so polygamy for the scientist is an extreme development of the instinct
for variety. A man thus afflicted is incapable of constancy.
Doubtless there is a physical cause for this flitting from flower to flower--
as there is, doubtless, for the intermittent groaning which appears
to afflict Mr. Moon at the present moment. Our own world-scorning
Winterbottom has even dared to say, `For a certain rare and fine
physical type polygamy is but the realization of the variety of females,
as comradeship is the realization of the variety of males.'
In any case, the type that tends to variety is recognized by all
authoritative inquirers. Such a type, if the widower of a negress,
does in many ascertained cases espouse ~en seconde noces~ an albino;
such a type, when freed from the gigantic embraces of a female Patagonian,
will often evolve from its own imaginative instinct the consoling figure of
an Eskimo. To such a type there can be no doubt that the prisoner belongs.
If blind doom and unbearable temptation constitute any slight excuse
for a man, there is no doubt that he has these excuses.

"Earlier in the inquiry the defence showed real chivalric
ideality in admitting half of our story without further dispute.
We should like to acknowledge and