What, then, is the precise influence of children? My reply is, that in all homes where the wife is a positive, healthy and desirable woman, the repeated birth of a child at regular intervals thoroughly adapts the woman by giving her a full physiological and spiritual life, and thus reconciles the principal member of the household (as far as stability is concerned) to the monogamic state and to the home. She can afford to control her temper when she is enjoying the perfect serenity of mind and body that complete adaptation brings. She can afford to pretend devotion, for economic and other reasons, to a creature who has long ceased from holding even that space in her heart, which is occupied by her first baby’s smallest toe. She can afford to put up with years, not to mention hours, of a boring companion, seeing that he secures her this perfect serenity, and, by his daily labours, guarantees her own and her precious children’s survival. If she is clever, she realizes how much is at stake, and she makes allowances for his peculiarities. If she is shrewd enough to appreciate the true nature of her happiness, she does her utmost, in order that her bliss may be uninterrupted, to delude him into thinking that he is _not_ merely the fifth wheel of the family coach. And while all the world points the moral that it is the children who have “cemented” the affection between herself and her husband, she knows perfectly well that this affection has long ago been transmuted into a curious compound of which the principal ingredients are: a desire to play a safe game, a deep attachment to her children impelling her to secure by fair means or foul someone who will supply them with all they need, and a patient toleration of a creature whom she does her best to regard as something more precious than a necessary evil. The fact that this curious compound appears to the outside world in the false light of connubial affection does not disturb her, because, as a rule, she is constitutionally and congenitally predisposed herself to a romantic interpretation of phenomena, and eagerly seizes the tinselly cloak the world gives her, in order to conceal the sordid truth. In such circumstances the union might last for ever. The only event that can bring it to an end is the demise of one of the parties to it.