Conventionality and mental inertness pronounce this unheard-of, even immoral. On the other hand, it is regarded as equally natural and moral that the majority of sailors and commercial travellers should live for the greater part of the year apart from their wives; that journeys for scientific or artistic purposes should separate married people for years, or that—in exceptional cases—one of them, for instance, should spend the winters as a gymnast in England while the other is a teacher in Sweden. All these things, it is thought, are nothing but external necessities. And to these one always submits! Ought we not, nevertheless, to find room for the thought that there may also be necessities of the soul? Our time, for instance, tends more and more to bring together artists who work at different, or, still more often, at the same art. The nerves of both are worn in the same way; both need the same freedom of movement and the same undisturbed quiet. But in the claims of everyday life for mutual sympathy and mutual consideration, nearly all their spiritual energy is used up. They see that, if they are not to consume one another’s mental resources, they must adopt a system of spiritual separation, which is possible only at a certain distance. The holiday happiness of these natures may be rapturous, the sympathetic union of their souls richer than any others. But each feels for the other what is expressed by one of Shakespeare’s joyous young women, when she calls a suitor “too costly for every day’s wear.” Each is tempted at times to exclaim, like another young woman in a modern book: “I want to be able to say, let me now for three weeks be altogether free from loving you”—since each knows that this freedom would only renew the feeling. But now married people are bound by custom to a common life, which often ends in their separating for ever, simply because conventional considerations prevented their living apart. Natures of other types may also feel the constraint of narrow dependence, enforced association, the daily accommodations and constant considerations. More people ought, therefore, quietly to begin reforming matrimonial customs, so that they may more nearly correspond to the need of renewal just alluded to. Let each, for instance, travel separately, if he or she feels the desire of solitude; let one visit by himself the entertainment the other does not care for, but formerly either forced herself to, or kept the other from visiting. More and more married people have separate bedrooms. And in another generation perhaps separate dwellings will have ceased to attract attention.