"I don't know what women are coming to," said a fat little man, as cosily tucked into his chair as a hazel nut in its husk. "They seem to think they can do just as they please." A tall thin man said: "It all began with the bicycle. Women have never been the same since bicycles came in." "It wouldn't have been so bad," said the fat little man, "if they'd cut and run." And Old Mole repeated that sentence to himself. "What I can't understand is," said the first speaker, who seemed the most indignant, "why he didn't shut her up until she had come to her senses. After all, we are all human, and that is what I should have done. If women won't regard the sacredness of the home, where are we?" "Surely," said Old Mole, incensed into speaking, "it depends on the home." "I beg your pardon, sir," retorted the nearest man with some heat. "It does not. In these matters you can't make exceptions. Home is home, and there is no getting away from it. If a woman grows sick of her home it is her own fault and she must stick to it, dree her own weird, as the Scotch say. Destroy the home and society falls to the ground." And Old Mole, sharpened by argument, replied: "Society is no more permanent than any other institution. Its existence depends entirely on its power to adapt itself to life. It is certainly independent of the innumerable sentimental ideas with which men endeavor to plaster up the cracks in its walls, among which I must count that of home." The three men gaped at him. He continued: "Home, I conceive, has a meaning for children. It is the place in which they grow up. We make homes for our young as the birds make nests for theirs. When the children go forth then the home is empty and is no longer home. Men are no longer patriarchs and no more do they gather the generations under one roof-tree. . . . In the case under discussion there were no children, therefore there was never a home to defend or regard as sacred. Man and woman alike had placed themselves in a false position. What further they had to suffer we do not know. We know that the man took refuge in the closest egoism, and the woman finally in the restless adventure of which we know no more than has been reported to a newspaper by a dull and mechanical shorthand writer. My own view is that, where there are no children, society at large is not interested. Society is only interested in any marriage in so far as it will provide children to ensure its continued existence. Once children are born it is interested to see that they are fed, clothed and educated. (How effectively our present society pursues that interest you may easily observe if you will visit East or South London.) Beyond that its interference, explicit or covert, seems to me to be an unwarrantable intrusion into the privacy of the human soul. No one of us here is in a position to judge of the affair which is the occasion of your argument, and . . . and . . . I beg your pardon for interfering with it."