“Let’s forget him,” said Rose. “Anyway,” she resumed a moment later, “why must there always be marriage? Marriages so often go wrong. Look at Dulcie Lenox—she’s left her husband already. Look at the divorce cases! Why can’t two people love and get the best of life and then go their own way again?” “It’s for the sake of society,” I said, “the human family. We’ve all got to help to keep that together.” “Why should we?” Rose asked. “We didn’t ask to be born.” “No, but being born, we must play the game. It’s part of the contract. It’s our payment for the privilege of existing at all.” “Just chivalry?” “If you like to put it like that. But most of us are rather proud of the obligation.” “And if we say no; that we don’t care a pin about the human family; all we care about is our own happiness, what then?” “Well, then we’re traitors, that’s all. We’ve been found wanting.” “It’s rather a shame, isn’t it, to force so much responsibility on people who never asked for it?” “Yes, I think it is. But life without responsibility wouldn’t be worth anything. That’s a conclusion I’ve reached after sixty-eight years.” “Oh, don’t count up! You’re much too proud of those figures. But when did you discover it? When you were eighteen, like me?” “No, when I was eighteen I thought more or less as you do; only not quite so freely, because there had been no great war to break down our ideals and set up materialism and belief in the divine right of every individual to be selfish and anti-social.” “Do you think that’s what we are?” “Too many people are. But I’m quite conscious that they may be right and the others wrong. In fact, the older I grow, the more convinced I am that everyone, however wrong, has some right in him, and every one, however right, some wrong.” “Well I’m not going to marry for years and years,” said Rose. “I’m going to paint first. Art will be my husband.” “With a little dancing with human partners thrown in?” I suggested. “Yes, of course.” At this moment the bell rang, indicating that the pupil had arrived, and for the next hour my would-be Rosa Bonheur was showing steps. * * * * * How few things we should do if we had time to examine carefully every action and its possible consequences before we committed ourselves to it! I for one, probably—but one never knows—instead of encouraging Rose in her drawing and painting should have discouraged her; for it led straight to London, and when your children, your own or your foster-children, get to London, they are lost. New lives begin, with new parents—for London is father and mother too. Careers have to be, I suppose, and leading strings must be cut—but O! the severance of heart-strings that that operation involves as well!