“Those are my own private feelings, Paramor.  But here the mischief’s done already.  It is a sham, a hateful sham, and it ought to come to an end!”

“That’s all very well,” replied Mr. Paramor, “but when you come to put it into practice in that wholesale way it leads to goodness knows what.  It means reconstructing marriage on a basis entirely different from the present.  It’s marriage on the basis of the heart, and not on the basis of property.  Are you prepared to go to that length?”

“I am.”

“You’re as much of an extremist one way as Barter is the other.  It’s you extremists who do all the harm.  There’s a golden mean, my friend.  I agree that something ought to be done.  But what you don’t see is that laws must suit those they are intended to govern.  You’re too much in the stars, Vigil.  Medicine must be graduated to the patient.  Come, man, where’s your sense of humour?  Imagine your conception of marriage applied to Pendyce and his sons, or his Rector, or his tenants, and the labourers on his estate.”

“No, no,” said Gregory; “I refuse to believe——­”

“The country classes,” said Mr. Paramor quietly, “are especially backward in such matters.  They have strong, meat-fed instincts, and what with the county Members, the Bishops, the Peers, all the hereditary force of the country, they still rule the roast.  And there’s a certain disease—­to make a very poor joke, call it ‘Pendycitis’ with which most of these people are infected.  They’re ‘crass.’  They do things, but they do them the wrong way!  They muddle through with the greatest possible amount of unnecessary labour and suffering!  It’s part of the hereditary principle.  I haven’t had to do with them thirty five years for nothing!”

Gregory turned his face away.

“Your joke is very poor,” he said.  “I don’t believe they are like that!  I won’t admit it.  If there is such a disease, it’s our business to find a remedy.”

“Nothing but an operation will cure it,” said Mr. Paramor; “and before operating there’s a preliminary process to be gone through.  It was discovered by Lister.”

Gregory answered

“Paramor, I hate your pessimism!”

Mr. Paramor’s eyes haunted Gregory’s back.

“But I am not a pessimist,” he said.  “Far from it.

    “’When daisies pied and violets blue,
          And lady-smocks all silver-white,
     And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
          Do paint the meadows with delight,
     The cuckoo then, on every tree——­’”

Gregory turned on him.

“How can you quote poetry, and hold the views you do?  We ought to construct——­”

“You want to build before you’ve laid your foundations,” said Mr. Paramor.  “You let your feelings carry you away, Vigil.  The state of the marriage laws is only a symptom.  It’s this disease, this grudging narrow spirit in men, that makes such laws necessary.  Unlovely men, unlovely laws—­what can you expect?”