"I've got the facts," he said, "and I'd like for you to hear them. And, after to-night, we mustn't see each other so often. To make it easier for us when we go, we'd better keep as far apart as need be till then. There's a lot must pass between us and we can't post letters very well--not in the pillar-boxes; but we may want a pillar-box of our own presently." "What I hate about life," she cried, "is that you've got to pretend such a lot. If this had happened to Jane, she'd love the hiding up and the plotting and turning and twisting, like a hare running away from the hounds. But I hate it. I hate to think the world's full of people, who look at life in such a way that what we're going to do must be wrong." "They've been brought up with fixed ideas about marriage and think it's got more to do with God than with men and women. The interests of the Church are put high above right and justice for the people. They always were; and them that claim marriage is God's plan, also claim that He would chain wretched, mistaken creatures together for life, quite regardless of their honour and decency and self-respect. It's funny that educated men should write the stuff I read; but the moment you see the word 'God' in a newspaper, you can say good-bye to reason and pity. We're punished--we who make a mistake--for what? Oft for nothing but misreading character, or because truth's withheld from us on purpose. Palk was telling of a man he knew who went courting and was never told his intended's mother was in a mad-house. And he married, and his wife went out of her mind with her first child. Now she's got to be put away and may live for fifty years, and sane, well-meaning people tell the man he must bide a widower for ever-more--at the will of God! God wills he should go alone to his dying day, because his wife's people hid the truth from him." "But the law--surely the law----?" "The law's with the Church so far. They hunt in couples. But the law's like to be altered 'tis thought; though no doubt the Church will call down fire from Heaven if any human mercy and common sense and decency is brought to bear on marriage." "Can't the religious people see that lots quite as good as them, and quite as willing and wishful to do right are being put in the wrong? And can't they see tortured men and women won't be patient for ever?"