“Barry.”  Gerda’s face was grave; her forehead was corrugated.  “Suppose we neither of us ever change?  Suppose we both go on thinking as we do now for always?  What then?”

He smoothed the knitted forehead with his fingers.

“Then one of us will have to be a traitor to his or her principles.  A pity, but sometimes necessary in this complicated world.  Or, if we can neither of us bring ourselves down to that, I suppose eventually we shall each perpetrate with someone else the kind of union we personally prefer.”

They parted on that.  The thing had not grown serious yet; they could still joke about it.

3

Though Gerda said “What’s the use of my talking about it to people when I’ve made up my mind?” and though she had not the habit of talking for conversation’s sake, she did obediently open the subject with her parents, in order to assure herself beyond a doubt what they felt about it.  But she knew already that their opinions were what you might expect of parents, even of broad-minded, advanced parents, who rightly believed themselves not addicted to an undiscriminating acceptance of the standards and decisions of a usually mistaken world.  But Barry was wrong in saying they weren’t institutionalists; they were.  Parents are.

Rodney was more opinionated than Neville, on this subject as on most others.  He said, crossly, “It’s a beastly habit, unlegitimatised union.  When I say beastly, I mean beastly; nothing derogatory, but merely like the beasts—­the other beasts, that is.”

Gerda said “Well, that’s not really an argument against it.  In that sense it’s beastly when we sleep out instead of in bed, or do lots of other quite nice things.  The way men and women do things isn’t necessarily the best way,” and there Rodney had to agree with her.  He fell back on “It’s unbusinesslike.  Suppose you have children?” and Gerda, who had supposed all that with Barry, sighed.  Rodney said a lot more, but it made little impression on her, beyond corroborating her views on the matrimonial theories of middle-aged people.

Neville made rather more.  To Neville Gerda said “How can I go back on everything I’ve always said and thought about it, and go and get married?  It would be so reactionary.”

Neville, who had a headache and was irritable, said “It’s the other thing that’s reactionary.  It existed long before the marriage tie did.  That’s what I don’t understand about all you children who pride yourselves on being advanced.  If you frankly take your stand on going back to nature, on being reactionary—­well, it is, anyhow, a point of view, and has its own merits.  But your minds seem to me to be in a hopeless muddle.  You think you’re going forward while you’re really going back.”

“Marriage,” said Gerda, “is so Victorian.  It’s like antimacassars.”