‘How will you express all that?’

‘Mutual respect is necessary for mutual love.’

‘Yes, I am sure that that is right.’

’It sounds obvious, but the very intensity of love makes love soft and blind.  Now I have another, which I am convinced that you will not agree with.’

‘Let me hear it.’

‘I have put it in this way, “The tight cord is the easiest to snap."’

‘What do you mean?’

’Well, I mean that married couples should give each other a certain latitude and freedom.  If they don’t, one or other will sooner or later chafe at the restriction.  It is only human nature, which is an older and more venerable thing than marriage.’

‘I don’t like that at all, Frank.’

’I feared you wouldn’t, dear, but I believe you’ll see it with me when I explain what I mean.  If you don’t, then I must try to see it with you.  When one talks of freedom in married life, it means, as a rule, freedom only for the man.  He does what he likes, but still claims to be a strict critic of his wife.  That, I am sure, is wrong.  To take an obvious example of what I mean, has a husband a right to read his wife’s letters?  Certainly not, any more than she has a right to read his without his permission.  To read them as a matter of course would be stretching the chain too tight.’

‘Chain is a horrid word, Frank.’

’Well, it is only a metaphor.  Or take the subject of friendships.  Is a married man to be debarred from all friendship and intimacy with another woman?’

Maude looked doubtful.

‘I should like to see the woman first,’ she said.

’Or is a married woman to form no friendship with another man who might interest or improve her?  There is such a want of mutual confidence in such a view.  People who are sure of each other should give each other every freedom in that.  If they don’t, they are again stretching it tight.’

’If they do, it may become so slack that it might as well not be there at all.’

’I felt sure that we should have an argument over this.  But I have seen examples.  Look at the Wardrops.  There were a couple who were never apart.  It was their boast that everything was in common with them.  If he was not in, she opened his letters, and he hers.  And then there came a most almighty smash.  The tight cord had snapped.  Now, I believe that for some people, it is a most excellent thing that they should take their holidays at different times.’

‘O Frank!’

’Yes, I do.  No, not for us, by Jove!  I am generalising now.  But for some couples, I am sure that it is right.  They reconsider each other from a distance, and they like each other the better.’

’Yes, but these rules are for our guidance, not for that of other people.’

’Quite right, dear.  I was off the rails.  “As you were,” as your brother Jack would say.  But I am afraid that I am not going to convince you over this point.’