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 the population. What a wonderful, noble thing to
believe, at twenty, thought Neville, remembering the levity of her own
irresponsible youth, when her only interest in the population had been
a nightmare fear lest they should at last become so numerous that they
would be driven out of the towns into the country and would be scuttling
over the moors, downs and woods like black beetles in kitchens in the
night. They were better than she had been, these children; more