ears one's husband is at least an old
friend,' and her answer was: 'Yes, and one would like him to be that and
nothing more.' The decade seems to have a special significance in
marriage. After the trying first year is over, most couples settle down
comfortably enough until nearing the tenth year. The president of the
Divorce Court has called this the danger zone of married life. One of
the subsequent letters in _The Daily Mail_, approving Mr Meredith's
suggestion, alluded to the present form of marriage as 'the
life-sentence,' and suggested a still shorter time limit, five years for
choice, since during that time a couple would have found happiness or
the reverse, and in the latter case ten years was too long to wait for
freedom.

A writer in another paper cited America as an example of terminable
marriage in full working order. 'It appears from the statement of an
American bishop that the people of the United States are actually living
under Mr Meredith's conditions already. Last year (1903) as many as
600,000 American marriages were dissolved. This means that there was one
divorce to every four marriages. In some districts the proportion was
more like one to two. And the most frequent cause of divorce was a
desire for change!'

It seems to me that the establishment of a leasehold marriage system
would only result in wholesale wretchedness and confusion, beside which
the present sum of marital misery would be but a drop in the ocean. If
our marriage laws must be modified, let us trust it will not be in this
direction, though it is obvious enough that such a change would come as
a boon to thousands of men and women, who from one cause or another have
come to loathe the tie that binds them. Whether it would not also
disturb the prosaic content that passes for happiness with millions more
is too big a question to be more than mentioned here.

The fate of those who are tied for life to lunatics, criminals, and
drunkards is pitiable indeed, but an extension of the laws of divorce
would meet their exceptional case, without disturbing the marriage bond
of normal people. I have endeavoured to indicate some of the many
difficulties of leasehold marriage in the following dialogue.

II

LEASEHOLD MARRIAGE IN PRACTICE
A DIALOGUE IN 1999

'There is one thing that women dread more than celibacy--it is
repudiation.' --MARCEL PREVOST.

_Katharine and Margaret, both attractive women on the borderland of
fort