I know, because I have seen it happen. In Holland I met a certain eminent novelist and poet, a great and lovable man. I visited his home, and met his wife and two little children, and saw a man and woman living in domestic happiness. The man had also two grown sons, and after a few days he remarked that he would like me to meet the mother of these young men. We went for a walk of a mile or so, and met a lady who lived in a small house by herself, and who received us with a friendly welcome and talked with us for a couple of hours about music and books and art. This lady had been the writer's wife for ten years or so, and there had been a terrible uproar when they voluntarily parted. But they had refused to pay attention to this uproar; they understood why they did not wish to remain husband and wife any longer, but they did not consider it necessary to quarrel about it, nor even to break off the friendship which their common interests made possible. The two women in the case were not intimate, I gathered, but they frequently met at the homes of others, and found no difficulty in being friendly. I suggest to Mrs. Wharton that this story is at least as interesting as the one she has told; but I fear she will not care to write it, because apparently she considers it necessary that people who are well bred and refined should be the helpless victims of destructive manias. CHAPTER XLVII THE RESTRICTION OF DIVORCE (Discusses the circumstances under which society has the right to forbid divorce, or to impose limitations upon it.) We have quoted the old maxim, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure," and we suggested that parents and guardians should have the right to ask the young to wait before marriage, and make certain of the state of their hearts. We have now the same advice to give concerning divorce; the same claim to enter on behalf of society--that it has and should assert the right to ask people to delay and think carefully before breaking up a marriage. What interest has society in the restriction of divorce? What affair is it of any other person if I choose to get a divorce and marry a new wife once a month? There are many reasons, not in any way based upon religious superstition or conventional prejudice. In the first place, there are or may be children, and society should try to preserve for every child a home with a father and a mother in it. Second, there are property rights, of which every marriage is a tangle, and the settlement of which the law should always oversee. Third, there is the question of venereal disease, which society has an unquestionable right to keep down, by every reasonable restriction upon sexual promiscuity. And finally, there is the respect which all men and women owe to love. It seems to me that society has the same right to protect love against extreme outrage, as it has to forbid indecent exposure of the person on the street.