Would the reader perhaps have it otherwise? Would he have a race of women reared (we are unfortunately not so very far from the attainment of this ideal to-day) to whom the claims of Life are secondary—women, that is to say, who are so constituted that they could hesitate between Life’s call and some trumpery human convention? Would he have women so constituted that their self-preservative instinct is more powerful than their reproductive? Because that is what it amounts to. A woman who, when confronted by Life’s call, can calmly discriminate between that and her own safety, her own future, her own smug ease, and can proceed to select the latter in preference to the former, is not a desirable woman in the best sense, for she cannot be trusted to do the right thing for the species in all circumstances. The spark of vitality in her does not glow with sufficient ardour to compel her to serve Life’s interests before her own. She is the kind of woman that is rapidly coming into power in all classes above the working class, but hers is a _bad_ character, not a _good_ character, for a woman to possess. No, we want to keep the best women as they are. We do not want to tame the life out of them. But since we cannot have it both ways, if we insist on women remaining desirable—that is to say, faithful primarily to Life itself, we must breed a race of men who understand them, and who in the absence of their fellows on wars or expeditions can see what is happening when young wives “make eyes at them.” Any man who in such circumstances imagines he is irresistible and falls in with the woman’s designs through sheer vanity, deserves a punishment very much more severe than being mulcted in damages; he has qualified himself for some disciplinary correction which ought at least to include a term of hard labour. For it is not his understanding of woman alone that is at fault—although this in a full-grown man would be unpardonable enough—but his estimate of himself, which leads him to the gross presumption of imagining himself capable of conquering another man’s wife single-handed without the assistance of Life itself, pushing her violently into his arms the whole time.[82] Why, he might just as well flatter himself that a flea has bitten him, not because it was too hungry to wait, but because there was something exceptionally delicate or precious in the composition of his vile blood! _Thus adultery, when the wife is the defaulter, is always a case of a man betraying another man, and never that of a woman betraying her man. Woman, if she is the right sort, remains throughout faithful to Life. Only if she betrays Life does she cease to be desirable._ Continuing our consideration of the positive couple, we must now examine the forces which operate in causing a woman to be unfaithful to her husband while yet living and cohabiting with him in apparent peace and happiness.