tory marriage. They are tolerably successful. But when the death of Stahl's wife clears the way, they return, for various reasons of expediency, to a legal status.
Mr. Wells, Mr. Galsworthy, May Sinclair, and Mr. Beresford are all, I think, seriously interested in morality. On the whole, their work does not contemptuously and explicitly challenge the idea of monogamous marriage. At least, it does not flout the possibility of arriving, by freedom of readjustment, at some reasonably satisfactory and permanent relationship between one man and one woman. And so, in a sense, their point of view begins to appear relatively conservative. If they could be questioned regarding their moral purposes or tendencies, they would profess sincere respect for virtue. But they would add that they are concerned, as novelists, with reflecting the revision which the idea of virtue is undergoing in our time. They are generally willing to admit that society and the state are related in necessary and vital ways to the customary form of sexual alliance. But they repudiate the notion that mere legality can set the seal of virtue upon any such alliance. Less firmly, yet pretty clearly, they repudiate the notion that mere illegality can
