"I doubt if the sanctity of the home is maintained by keeping unwilling
mates together, Nance. I can imagine nothing less sanctified than a home
of that sort--peopled by a couple held together against the desire of
either or both. The willing mates need no compulsion, and they're the
ones, it seems to me, that have given the home its reputation for
sanctity. I never thought much about divorce, but I can see that much at
once. Of course, Allan takes the Church's attitude, which survives from
a time when a woman was bought and owned; when the God of Moses classed
her with the ox and the ass as a thing one must not covet."

"You really think if a woman has made a failure of her marriage she has
a right to break it."

"That seems sound as a general law, Nance--better for her to make a
hundred failures, for that matter, than stay meekly in the first because
of any superstition. But, mind you, if she suspects that the Church may,
after all, have succeeded in tying up the infinite with red-tape and
sealing-wax--believes that God is a large, dark notary-public who has
recorded her marriage in a book--she will do better to stay. Doubtless
the conceit of it will console her--that the God who looks after the
planets has an eye on her, to see that she makes but one guess about so
uncertain a thing as a man."

"Then you would advise--"

"No, I wouldn't. The woman who has to be advised should never take
advice. I dare say divorce is quite as hazardous as marriage, though
possibly most people divorce with a somewhat riper discretion than they
marry with. But the point is that neither marriage nor divorce can be