HILARY. There is no situation. I married Meg. I fell ill. Now I’m well again. I want my wife. DR. ALLIOT. Why, yes--yes-- HILARY. [_Picking it up irritably_] “Yes--yes--” “Yes--yes--” I suppose that’s what you call humouring a lunatic. DR. ALLIOT. Why, I hope to be convinced, Fairfield, that that trouble’s over, but-- HILARY. But you’re going to lock me up again because I want my wife. DR. ALLIOT. [_Patiently_] Will you let me put the case to you? HILARY. You can put fifty cases. It makes no difference. SYDNEY. [_At his elbow, softly_] Father, I’d listen. HILARY. [_Slipping his arm through hers_] Eh? Sydney? that you? You’re not against me, Sydney? SYDNEY. Nobody’s against you. We only want you to listen. HILARY. Well, out with it! DR. ALLIOT. D’you remember--can you throw your mind back to the beginning of the agitation against the marriage laws? No, you were a schoolboy-- HILARY. Deceased wife’s sister, eh? That’s the law that lets a man marry his sister-in-law and won’t let a woman marry her brother-in-law. Pretty good, that, for your side of the counter. DR. ALLIOT. Well, well, that hardly matters now. HILARY. It shows what your rotten, muddle-headed laws are worth, anyhow. SYDNEY. Father. HILARY. All right! Go ahead! Go ahead! DR. ALLIOT. Well, as the result of that agitation--and remember, Hilary, what thousand, thousand tragedies must have had voice in such an outcry--a commission was appointed to enquire into the working of the divorce laws. It made its report, recommended certain drastic reforms, and there, I suppose, as is the way with commissions, would have been the end of the subject, if it hadn’t been for the war--and the war marriages. HILARY. [_Lowering_] So that’s where I come in! Margaret, is that where I come in? DR. ALLIOT. Never, I suppose, in one decade were there so many young marriages. Happy? that’s another thing! Marry in haste-- MARGARET. They weren’t all happy. DR. ALLIOT. But they were _young_, those boys and girls who married. As young as Kit, and as impatient as Sydney. And that saved them. That young, young generation found out, out of their own unhappiness, the war taught them, what peace couldn’t teach us--that when conditions are evil it is not your duty to submit--that when conditions are evil, your duty, in spite of protests, in spite of sentiment, your duty, though you trample on the bodies of your nearest and dearest to do it, though you bleed your own heart white, your duty is to see that those conditions are changed. If your laws forbid you, you must change your laws. If your church forbids you, you must change your church; and if your God forbids you, why then, you must change your God. MISS FAIRFIELD. And we who will not change? MARGARET. Or cannot change--?