this country, it stands to reason that some system of polygamy must
become the usual thing in the future."

"It's always been the usual thing, darling. Dreadfully usual. It's so
much more amusing to be unusual in these ways."

Neville's voice trailed drowsily away. Polygamy. Sex. Free Love. Love in
chains. The children seemed so often to be discussing these. Just as,
twenty years ago, she and her friends had seemed always to be discussing
the Limitations of Personality, the Ethics of Friendship, and the Nature,
if any, of God. This last was to Kay and Gerda too hypothetical to be a
stimulating theme. It would have sent them to sleep, as sex did Neville.

Neville, led by Free Love to a private vision, brooded cynically over
savages dancing round a wood-pile in primeval forests, engaged in what
missionaries, journalists, and writers of fiction about our coloured
brothers call "nameless orgies" (as if you would expect most orgies to
answer to their names, like the stars) and she saw the steep roads of the
round world running back and back and back--on or back, it made no
difference, since the world was round--to this. Saw, too, a thousand
stuffy homes wherein sat couples linked by a legal formula so rigid, so
lasting, so indelible, that not all their tears could wash out a word of
it, unless they took to themselves other mates, in which case their
second state might be worse than their first. Free love--love in chains.
How absurd it all was, and how tragic too. One might react back to the
remaining choice--no love at all--and that was absurder and more tragic
still, since man was made (among other ends) to love. Looking under her
heavy lashes at her pretty young children, incredibly youthful, absurdly
theoretical, fiercely clean of mind and frank of speech, their clearness
as yet unblurred by the expediencies, compromise and experimental
contacts of life, Neville was stabbed by a sharp pang of fear and hope
for them. Fear lest on some fleeting impulse they might founder into the
sentimental triviality of short-lived contacts, or into the tedium of
bonds which must out-live desire; hope that, by some fortunate chance,
they might each achieve, as she had achieved, some relation which should
be both durable and to be endured. As to the third path--no love at
all--she did not believe that either Kay or Gerda would tread that. They
were emotional, in their cool and youthful way, and also believed that
they ought to increase th