Nature has set about this business in a CHEAP sort of way. She is
like some pushful advertising tradesman. She isn't frank with us; she
just humbugs us into what she wants with us. All very well in the early
Stone Age--when the poor dear things never realized that their mutual
endearments meant all the troubles and responsibilities of parentage.
But NOW--!"
He shook his head sideways and twirled the green umbrella like an
animated halo around his large broad-minded face.
Sir Richmond considered. "Desire has never been the chief incentive of
my relations with women. Never. So far as I can analyze the thing, it
has been a craving for a particular sort of life giving companionship."
"That I take it is Nature's device to keep the lovers together in the
interest of the more or less unpremeditated offspring."
"A poor device, if that is its end. It doesn't keep parents together;
more often it tears them apart. The wife or the mistress, so soon as
she is encumbered with children, becomes all too manifestly not the
companion goddess...."
Sir Richmond brooded over his sculls and thought.
"Throughout my life I have been an exceedingly busy man. I have done a
lot of scientific work and some of it has been very good work. And
very laborious work.
Pages:
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64