“Exactly the word. She loves him for all sorts of reasons but she cannot have him in the usual sense (I found out all about that, by the way). Therefore, the only thing left her to do is acquire him, to take his life in hers. You may think _she_ may think that her slavish adoration is only humble love but actually it’s something far more significant, and dangerous.” “I don’t see the danger, even accepting your hypothesis.” “It’s no hypothesis and the danger is real. Iris will have him and, through him, she’ll have you all.” I did not begin to understand that day and Clarissa, in her pythoness way, was no help, muttering vague threats and imprecations with her mouth full of bread. After my first jealousy at Iris’s preference of Cave to me, a jealousy which I knew, even at the time, was unjustified and a little ludicrous, I had come to accept her devotion to Cave as a perfectly natural state of affairs; he was an extraordinary man and though he did not fulfill her in the usual sense, he gave her more than mere lover might: he gave her a whole life and I envied her for having been able to seize so shrewdly upon this unique way _out_ of ordinary life and into something more grand, more strange, more engaging. Though I could not follow her, I was able to appreciate her choice and admire the completeness of her days. That she was obscurely using Cave for her own ends, subverting him, did not seem to me possible and I was annoyed by Clarissa’s dark warnings. I directed the conversation into the other waters. “The children. I haven’t decided what to do with them.” Clarissa came to a full halt. For a moment she forgot to chew. Then, with a look of pain, she swallowed. “_Your_ children?” “Any children, all children,” I pointed to the manuscript on the table. She began to understand. “I’m quite sure you have abolished marriage.” “As a matter of fact, yes, this morning.” “And now you don’t know what to do about the children.” “Precisely. I....” “Perfectly simple.” Clarissa was brisk: this, apparently, was a problem she had already solved. “The next step is controlled breeding. Only those whose blood lines seem promising should be allowed to procreate. Now that oral contraceptives are so popular no one will make babies by accident ... in fact, it should be a serious crime if someone does.” “Quite neat, but I wonder whether, psychologically, it’s simple. There’s the whole business of instinct, of the natural desire of a woman to want her own child after bearing it.” “All habit ... not innate. Children have been subordinate woman’s ace in the hole for generations. They have had to develop certain traits which, in other circumstances, they would not have entertained. Rats, whom we closely resemble, though they suckle their young will, in moments of mild hunger or even exasperation, think nothing of eating an entire litter. You can condition human beings to accept _any_ state of affairs as being perfectly natural.”