But it is absurd to try to analyze it; it is even more so to argue about it: but really women have grown very tired of having men tell them why they marry, tired of this confusion of result with cause, of a part with the whole, tired of the belittling of love by people who have never experienced it, tired of this sex obsession. It is doubly absurd to waste time in arguing when the best argument I can offer against the Raft theory is the book itself, where the author spends most of his time disproving his own definitely-stated idea through the actions of his characters. It is interesting to see that both Dawson and Shaw should, by methods diametrically opposite, show how fallacious is their statement by exactly the same circumstance,—that is, by having the woman care passionately for _the_ man, not _a_ man. That fact alone routs the whole theory. Certainly Cherry and Jehane have very decided personal preferences regardless of the next generation; moreover the Golden Woman and “heaps of other well-bred women” will not marry for fear of children; and Peter, Ockey, and the Faun Man insist on being ardent lovers that vainly pursue. Notwithstanding these contradictions throughout the book, the author keeps on bravely and inartistically reiterating his Raft motives, as if to keep up his courage. Possibly because he realizes that he is losing his theme, he starts another which is really the one consistently developed. This second theme is that love is never reciprocal: that at the best it is a case of one loving, the other allowing; that usually it is a case of one loving and the other not even allowing. He starts an endless chain of unrequited affection: Glory loves Peter; Peter loves Cherry; Cherry, the Faun Man; the Faun the Golden Woman; the Golden Woman, herself—or is it Peter? That is one chain; and another is Ockey loves Jehane; Jehane, Barrington; Barrington, Nan. These two themes working at cross purposes are typical of the book which is a mass of contradictions of this author’s own definitely expressed ideas, and of life. So many things do not ring true: the labored, morbid, commonplace treatment of Peter, “the ’maginative child,” as an exponent of the artistic temperament; the lack of love as the sole cause of Ockey’s failure, when he needs so many other things to make a man of him; the marriage of Nan and Barrington as the ideal union, when neither one has a nature intense enough to feel a great love, when even such love as they know has never been put to the merciless tests that life uses; the brooding, year in and year out, of the unmarried women over the loss of the joys of motherhood, and their lack of interest in any other phase of life; Jehane’s unworthiness, emphasized by the author in person and through his characters, when her actions with different treatment might have made her almost a heroine; the declared finality of so many things that are really only initial steps; platitudes as answers to the vital questions of life.