‘Don’t quarrel with British hypocrisy,’ said Amoret, lazily, ‘it’s our most valuable national asset. Hypocrisy simply holds the fabric of society together.’
‘Agreed,’ said Isolda, ‘we must pretend to believe monogamy is the rule, for peace sake, and for the ideal’s sake. Of course everybody knows there are plenty of polygynous husbands about, and, for the matter of that, polyandrous wives, but hypocrisy is a great aid to decency, and a nation must have decency of theory at least, if not of practice, or we should—er—h’m—decline like the Romans.’
‘I was waiting for one of you to mention the Romans,’ interposed Amoret, who for all her frivolity has a certain humorous shrewdness of her own. ‘It’s an invariable feature of all discussions on marriage. Directly one so much as breathes a suggestion that the marriage tie should be made more flexible to suit modern conditions, everyone present, except the unhappily married, pulls a long face and quotes the awful example of the Romans. Now I’ve got a gorgeous idea for solving the marriage problem.’
‘Tell us,’ cried three voices in unison.
‘Not yet, let’s get rid of the Romans first. I confided my idea to a man the other day, and when he had floored me with the Romans as usual, I went and looked up Gibbon.’
Laughter interrupted her: the idea of our butterfly Amoret poring over Gibbon.
‘Yes, I did,’ she continued, ‘and, as far as I could make out, it wasn’t their easy ideas about marriage that caused their decline, but their—what shall I say?—their general moral slackness. . . .’
‘I know,’ said Isolda, coming to the rescue. ‘I was reading a frightfully interesting book about it the other day, Imperial Purple. It was the relaxing of all ideals, the giving way entirely to carnal appetites, the utter lack of moral backbone consequent on excess of luxury and prosperity that smashed up the Romans. But if a strenuous, cold-blooded nation like ourselves chose to relax the stringent conditions of marriage, and kept strictly to the innovation, well, it’s absurd to say all our ideals would deteriorate and the Empire collapse in consequence!’
‘Hear, hear! Worthy of the Bluestocking herself!’
‘Very well,’ said Miranda. ‘I’ll give in about the Romans if you like, just so as to get on with the conversation. Now let’s have your gorgeous idea, Amoret.’