Evidently after due consideration Conny had concluded that the Lanes must come under her cognizance. She ran over half a dozen names from her best dinner list, and added, "And Tom."
"Why Tom this time?" Percy demanded.
"He's met Isabelle—and we always have Tommy! You aren't jealous, are you,
Percy?" She glanced at him in amusement.
"I must dress," Percy observed negligently, setting down his cup of tea.
"Come here and tell me you are not jealous," Conny commanded. As her husband smiled and brushed her fair hair with his lips, she muttered, "You silly!" just as she had to Cairy's unreasonableness. Why! She was Percy's destiny and he knew it…. She had a contempt for people who ruffled themselves over petty emotions. This sex matter had been exaggerated by Poets and Prudes, and their hysterical utterances should not inhibit her impulses.
Nevertheless she did not consider it a suitable opportunity to tell Percy about the kiss.
* * * * *
Percy Woodyard and Cornelia Pallanton had married on a new, radical basis. They had first met in the house of an intellectual woman, the wife of a university professor, where clever young persons were drawn in and taught to read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Ibsen and George Moore, and to engage gracefully in perilous topics. They had been rather conscious that they were radicals,—"did their own thinking," as they phrased it, these young persons. They were not willing to accept the current morality, not even that part of it engraved in law; but so far as regarded all of morality that lay outside the domain of sex their actions were not in conflict with society, though they were Idealists, and in most cases Sentimentalists. But in the matter of sex relation, which is the knot of the tangle for youth, they believed in the "development of the individual." It must be determined by him, or her, whether this development could be obtained best through regular or irregular relations. The end of all this individual development? "The fullest activity, the largest experience, the most complete presentation of personality," etc. Or as Fosdick railed, "Suck all and spit out what you don't like!"
So when these two young souls had felt sufficiently moved, one to the other, to contemplate marriage, they had had an "understanding": they would go through with the customary formula and oaths of marriage, to please their relatives and a foolish world; but neither was to be "bound" by any such piece of silly archaism as the marriage contract. Both recognized that both had diversified natures, which might require in either case more varied experience than the other could give. In their enlightened affection for each other, neither would stand in the light of the other's best good…. There are many such young people, in whom intellectual pride has erased deeper human instincts. But as middle life draws on, they conform—or seek refuge in the divorce court.
Neither Percy nor Cornelia had any intention of practising adultery as a habit: they merely wished to be honest with themselves, and felt superior to the herd in recognizing the errant or variant possibilities in themselves. Conny took pleasure in throwing temptation in Percy's way, in encouraging him to know other women,—secretly gratified that he proved hopelessly domestic. And on her side we have seen the innocent lengths to which she had hitherto gone.