"MY DEAR FOURMY,--My first impulse was to come down and implore you to return, to think of your career, or, if you are incapable of doing that, of us, to whom your career and, I may say, your happiness, are things of some moment. Linda forbade me to do that. She is well, but shows signs of strain. Frankly, I can understand neither of you. Bitterness, grievances keep men and women apart, but neither of these is in her. She alarms me. She seems to me to be grappling with an emotional situation with her intellect. That seems to me to be dangerous. She said of you: 'His intellect only comes into play when he is emotionally sure,' and gave me that, which I do not pretend to understand, as a reason for letting you go your way. I cannot do that without protest. She says: 'Men and women have the right to adjust their own difficulties and repair their own mistakes without reference to outside opinion, or, indeed, outside affection.' I cannot agree. My feeling is all against it. When a man and woman marry, they create a social entity which they are not entitled to destroy without consulting society. That is putting it at its very lowest, without thinking for a moment of the spiritual entity which marriage creates. You two seem to have agreed to disregard that----" René read no more. The old exasperation that the well-meaning Smallman had roused in him surged through him now, and he took pen and paper and wrote: "MY DEAR, GOOD, KINDLY IDIOT,--When no spiritual entity is created, then no social entity is created; nothing is created but an amorphous relationship which is hostile to society, and such relationships it is the duty of decent people to avoid and to destroy. Nothing is created, and if by good luck the calamity of having children is averted, then there is nothing to destroy; then those who are apart in fact are better also apart in appearance." So, with a startling suddenness he was driven to a conclusion, and knew that, come what might, he would abide by it. What Smallman had said of Linda strengthened him, gave him a clearer idea of her than he had ever had, an idea, moreover, in which with heart and mind he could rejoice. There was fight in her, too. He took up the Professor's letter once more. It was rather a good letter, ably setting out everything to be considered, the various interests that would be injured--relations, friends, the university, the little community of cultured persons who would be delivered up to coarse, commercial Thrigsby and its tongues. Clearly Smallman's dread was lest all these interests should be drawn down in the wreck of the young couple's marriage, and René could shudder and sympathize at the suffering and distress he might be causing. His resolution weakened a little until he thought of Linda, and then he said: "But we are saving ourselves. The marriage goes to hell or we do. They can't have both."