"But I don't do anything of the sort. Right is a great deal to me. In this matter right and wrong are not the problem at all. I'm only mourning custom and convention--not the clash of right and wrong." The sexual relation had never occupied this woman's mind apart from marriage. Now he made it do so, and very leisurely, very carefully, explained what he meant by "custom." His manner was light and bantering; none the less, he revealed to her his own deep interest in this discussion. He was a special pleader. He laughed at religious interference in this connection; told her that it was an outcome of yesterday; that foreign races shared wives and husbands; that where life was easy, many men had many wives; where life was hard, one woman might take several spouses. "Marriage laws," he said, "have always been a matter of physical propriety and convenience. Temperature and latitude, the food supply, the possibilities of population, and the dearly bought wisdom of the community, have regulated it--not any false nonsense about right and wrong." He told her nothing that was untrue; but everything he said was an indirect petition, and she knew it. She was not shocked at the facts he placed before her; indeed, they interested her; but she refused to let him influence her own opinion. She contrasted Hilary's information with the fierce and fiery ideas of her husband on the subject. Between the two her own mind, through forces of education, inclined to Daniel; yet she saw no great horror in a wider freedom. "'Tis wonderful how opposite men's thoughts can be," she said. "You and my husband do look at life almost as differently as the people you be telling about. 'Tis all one to you, so long as folk do what's good to themselves, without hurting other folk; but to him--why, the very name of evil be evil's self! Yesternight he was talking to a tramp who took one of your turnips; and Daniel saw him. And he said that, according to Christ, to look over a hedge with hunger after a root was as bad as pulling and eating it." "Doesn't it scorch you, living with such a narrow spirit?" "'Twould scorch me to make him unhappy." "That you must never do, Sarah Jane." He began to talk again of the subject in his mind. But she begged him to desist. "Leave it," she said. "What's the sense of telling me all these curious things about the way people go into marriage? Our way is so good as any, surely?" "I only want to enlarge your ideas, and prove my argument: that there's no right and wrong in the matter, only the question of fitness and custom. You're too large-minded to care a button for peddling quibbles. But leave it, if you like. What you want to do, before all else, is to make your husband happy; and so do I. Then we'll talk of that, for there we quite agree." "Thank you," she said. "'Tis more to me than anything." "And you'll feel a little kind to me for coming to it?"