“I think it should be open,” Gerda said.  “I think people should be absolutely free....  Take you and me.  Suppose you got tired of me, or liked someone else better, I think you ought to be able to leave me without any fuss.”

That was characteristic of both of them, that they could take their own case theoretically without becoming personal, without lovers’ protestations to confuse the general issue.

“Well,” Barry said, “I don’t think I ought.  I think it should be made as difficult for me as possible.  Because of the children.  There are usually children, of course.  If I left you, I should have to leave them too.  Then they’d have no father.  Or, if it were you that went, they’d have no mother.  Either way it’s a pity, normally.  Also, even if we stayed together always and weren’t married, they’d have no legal name.  Children often miss that, later on.  Children of the school age are the most conventional, hide-bound creatures.  They’d feel ashamed before their schoolfellows.”

“I suppose they’d have my name legally, wouldn’t they?”

“I suppose so.  But they might prefer mine.  The other boys and girls would have their fathers’, you see.”

“Not all of them.  I know several people who don’t hold with marriage either; there’d be all their children.  And anyhow it’s not a question of what the children would prefer while they were at school.  It’s what’s best for them.  And anything would be better than to see their parents hating each other and still having to live together.”

“Yes.  Anything would be better than that.  Except that it would be a useful and awful warning to them.  But the point is, most married people don’t hate each other.  They develop a kind of tolerating, companionable affection, after the first excitement called being in love is past—­so far as it does pass.  That’s mostly good enough to live on; that and common interests and so forth.  It’s the stuff of ordinary life; the emotional excitement is the hors d’oeuvre.  It would be greedy to want to keep passing on from one hors d’oeuvre to another—­leaving the meal directly the joint comes in.”

“I like dessert best,” Gerda said, irrelevantly, biting into an apple.

“Well, you’d never get any at that rate.  Nor much of the rest of the meal either.”

“But people do, Barry.  Free unions often last for years and years—­sometimes forever.  Only you wouldn’t feel tied.  You’d be sure you were only living together because you both liked to, not because you had to.”

“I should feel I had to, however free it was.  So you wouldn’t have that consolation about me.  I might be sick of you, and pining for someone else, but still I should stay.”

“Why, Barry?”