readily dissoluble when fatiguing) and many advantages over no marriages
at all, which do not increase the population, so depleted by the Great
War. When they spoke in this admirably civic sense, Neville was apt to
say "It doesn't want increasing. I waited twenty minutes before I could
board my bus at Trafalgar Square the other day. It wants more depleting,
I should say--a Great Plague or something," a view which Kay and Gerda
thought truly egotistical.

"I do hope," said Neville, her thoughts having led her to the statement,
"I do very much hope that neither of you will ever perpetrate that sort
of marriage. It would be so dreadfully common of you."

"Impossible to say," Kay said, vaguely.

"Considering," said Gerda, "that there are a million more women than men
in 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