“None at all. I cannot recall a single philoprogenitive moment. These dream women were all conceived of, and I was conceived of, as being concerned in some tremendous enterprise--something quite beyond domesticity. It kept us related--gave us dignity.... Certainly it wasn’t babies.” “All this is very interesting, very interesting, from the scientific point of view. A PRIORI it is not what one might have expected. Reasoning from the idea that all instincts and natural imaginations are adapted to a biological end and seeing that sex is essentially a method of procreation, one might reasonably expect a convergence, if not a complete concentration, upon the idea of offspring. It is almost as if there were other ends to be served. It is clear that Nature has not worked this impulse out to any sight of its end. Has not perhaps troubled to do so. The instinct of the male for the female isn’t primarily for offspring--not even in the most intelligent and farseeing types. The desire just points to glowing satisfactions and illusions. Quite equally I think the desire of the female for the male ignores its end. Nature has set about this business in a CHEAP sort of way. She is like some pushful advertising tradesman. She isn’t frank with us; she just humbugs us into what she wants with us. All very well in the early Stone Age--when the poor dear things never realized that their mutual endearments meant all the troubles and responsibilities of parentage. But NOW--!” He shook his head sideways and twirled the green umbrella like an animated halo around his large broad-minded face. Sir Richmond considered. “Desire has never been the chief incentive of my relations with women. Never. So far as I can analyze the thing, it has been a craving for a particular sort of life giving companionship.” “That I take it is Nature’s device to keep the lovers together in the interest of the more or less unpremeditated offspring.” “A poor device, if that is its end. It doesn’t keep parents together; more often it tears them apart. The wife or the mistress, so soon as she is encumbered with children, becomes all too manifestly not the companion goddess....” Sir Richmond brooded over his sculls and thought. “Throughout my life I have been an exceedingly busy man. I have done a lot of scientific work and some of it has been very good work. And very laborious work. I’ve travelled much. I’ve organized great business developments. You might think that my time has been fairly well filled without much philandering. And all the time, all the time, I’ve been--about women--like a thirsty beast looking for water.... Always. Always. All through my life.” Dr. Martineau waited through another silence.