He recognizes that just as there is not
room for two women in that sacredly intimate relation of
sentimental domesticity which is what marriage means to him, so
there is no room for two men in that relation with his wife; and
he accordingly tells her firmly that she must choose which man
will occupy the place that is large enough for one only. He is so
far shrewdly unconventional as to recognize that if she chooses
the other man, he must give way, legal tie or no legal tie; but he
knows that either one or the other must go. And a sensible wife
would act in the same way. If a romantic young lady came into
her house and proposed to adore her husband on a tolerated
footing, she would say "My husband has not room in his life for
two wives: either you go out of the house or I go out of it." The
situation is not at all unlikely: I had almost said not at all
unusual. Young ladies and gentlemen in the greensickly condition
which is called calf-love, associating with married couples at
dangerous periods of mature life, quite often find themselves
in it; and the extreme reluctance of proud and sensitive people to
avoid any assertion of matrimonial rights, or to condescend to
jealousy, sometimes makes the threatened husband or wife hesitate
to take prompt steps and do the apparently conventional thing.
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