what the
newspapers call licence. Everyone would have another chance, and what
the first partner lacked would be supplied by the second.'

'It's not such a bad idea,' said Isolda, musingly. 'Launcelot could
choose a good walker and bridge player for his alternative wife, and I'd
try to find a man who hated cards and never walked a step when he could
possibly ride.'

'I think it's a grand idea,' cried Miranda, enthusiastically. 'Lysander
could find a woman who'd play his accompaniments and love musical
comedies, and I'd look out for a man who made a cult of the higher drama
and had two permanent stalls at the Vedrenne-Barker Theatre.'

'It would simply solve everything,' cried Amoret, ecstatically.
'Whenever Theodore was disagreeable, off I'd go to my other one--and yet
without feeling I was neglecting him, as he could go to _his_ other one.
She would probably be a worthy, stolid, stayless lady with none of my
faults, and when he was fed up with her stolid staylessness he could
come back to me, and my very faults, you see, would be pleasing to him
by reason of their contrast to hers, and _vice versa_.'

'It's really a wonderful idea,' said Isolda, thoughtfully, 'I wonder no
one thought of it before. There would be fewer old maids, as men
wouldn't be so terribly shy of matrimony when they knew there would
always be that second chance. They wouldn't expect so much from one wife
as they do now. And think what a good effect it would have on our
manners, too--how kind and polite and self-controlled we would be, under
fear of being compared unfavourably with the other one.'

'Yes, it would certainly keep us all up to the mark,' reflected Miranda,
'slovenly wives would make an effort to be smart, and shrewish ones
would put a curb on their tongues. Husbands would be quite loverlike and
attentive, in their anxiety to outdo the other fellow.'

'It would smooth out the tangles all round,' declared Amoret; 'now just
take the cases known to us personally. The Fred Smiths, for instance,
haven't spoken to each other for three years, just because Fred fell in
love with Miss Brown and spends nearly all his time with her. Mrs Smith
is broken-hearted, Fred looks miserable enough--a home where no one
speaks to you must be simply Hades--and the Brown girl is always
threatening to commit suicide. The affair has quite spoilt her life, and
it must be very hard luck on the Smith children, growing up in such an
atmosphere. My plan would ha