The new chapters of _Regeneration_ had taken up the same matter and had displayed it in a somewhat different light. Abner had got hold of the idea of limited partnership and had sought to apply it, in roundabout fashion, to the matrimonial relation. His treatment, far from suggesting an academic aloofness, was as concrete as characterization and conversation could make it; no one would have supposed, at first glance, that what chiefly moved him was a chaste abstract Platonic regard for the whole gentler sex. In short, people--such seemed to be his thesis--might very advantageously separate, and most informally too, as soon as they discovered they were incompatible. "M--no," said Medora. "Wouldn't that be rather upsetting?" asked her mother. Mrs. Giles was an easy-going old soul, from whom art, as personified by her own children, got slight consideration, and to whom literature, as embodied in a stranger, was little less than a joke. "Wouldn't it result in a good deal of a mix-up? What would have happened to you youngsters if your father and I had all at once taken it into our heads to----" "Mother!" said Medora. "Oh, well," began Mrs. Giles, with the idea of making a gradual descent after her sudden aerial flight. "But, then," she resumed, "you must see that----" "Mother!" said Medora again. Abner, eager to defend his thesis, looked round in surprise. "I agree with Mrs. Giles completely," spoke up Clytie, with much promptitude. "When I get married I want to get married for good. Most of the people I know are married in that way, and I believe it's the most satisfactory way in the long run----" "But----" began Abner polemically. Clytie shook her head. "No, it won't do. You've offered us the ballot, and we don't want it. And you've offered us--this, and we don't want that either. Consider it declined." Abner stared at Clytie's brazen little face and disliked her more than ever. "But don't _you_ think----" began Abner, turning to Bond. Bond shook his head slowly and made no comment. Abner looked round at Medora. She was ranging the music-roll boxes in an orderly row. Nobody could have been more intent upon her work. "Well, it stands, all the same," said Abner defiantly. XII The clear, placid weather had been waiting several days for Sunday to come and possess it, and now Sunday was here. The young people stood bareheaded on the porch and looked down toward the village. "Do I hear the church bells?" asked Abner. He was a punctilious observer of Sabbath ordinances and always reached a state of subdued inner bustle shortly after the finish of the Sunday breakfast. "We sometimes make them out," replied Stephen Giles, "when the wind happens to blow right." "We are all going down this morning, I suppose?" observed Abner, confidently taking the initiative. "I expect so," replied Giles. "Count me out," said Clytie. "You do not go to church?" asked Abner. "Not often." "You have no religion?"