in these matters that a court of law could deal with? Fancy a court
for enforcing a contract of passion or sentiment! If such a thing
were needed as a reductio ad absurdum of the enforcement of contract,
such a folly would do that for us."

He was silent again a little, and then said: "You must understand
once for all that we have changed these matters; or rather, that our
way of looking at them has changed, as we have changed within the
last two hundred years. We do not deceive ourselves, indeed, or
believe that we can get rid of all the trouble that besets the
dealings between the sexes. We know that we must face the
unhappiness that comes of man and woman confusing the relations
between natural passion, and sentiment, and the friendship which,
when things go well, softens the awakening from passing illusions:
but we are not so mad as to pile up degradation on that unhappiness
by engaging in sordid squabbles about livelihood and position, and
the power of tyrannising over the children who have been the results
of love or lust."

Again he paused awhile, and again went on: "Calf love, mistaken for
a heroism that shall be lifelong, yet early waning into
disappointment; the inexplicable desire that comes on a man of riper
years to be the all-in-all to some one woman, whose ordinary human
kindness and human beauty he has idealised into superhuman
perfection, and made the one object of his desire; or lastly the
reasonable longing of a strong and thoughtful man to become the most
intimate friend of some beautiful and wise woman, the very type of
the beauty and glory of the world which we love so well,--as we exult
in all the pleasure and exaltation of spirit which goes with these
things, so we set ourselves to bear the sorrow which not unseldom