Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/208

206 "Yes, you might. What is the good of being serious at dinner? And such a good dinner, too—but not better than our lunch the other day. I did enjoy that,"

"Did you?" Fairfax looked a shade more cheerful. "I'm glad. Perhaps we can have another when I come back. And I'll be as frivolous as I can. I need to be frivolous if I'm going to amuse two people."

He came back to that again and again. He assured Teresa that her idea of marriage was totally wrong—unsocial.

"Marriage is an institution—a part of the state, of the organisation of society. Two people marry really for the purpose of helping one another socially, I mean in a broad sense; of bringing up children. The mere personal relation is a very small part of it. The feeling with which they marry, if they're in love with each other, doesn't last, can't last. It's bound to change. They ought to adapt themselves to that change, and make a broader relation on the basis of it—to take the family as the unit of their interest, not one another."

"I don't agree with you."

"Well, you will, some day. You'll find out that it doesn't work. Why marry at all, from your point of view?"

"Because it's more practical, and because common interests, and children, and common