expresses the increasing discolouration in my mind-"illicit

intercourse." To end at that, we nowperceived, wasn't in our

style. But where were we to end?…

Perhaps we might at this stage have given it up. Ithink if we

could haveseen ahead and around us we might have done so. But the

glow of our cell blinded us… I wonder what might have

happened if at that time we had given it up… We propounded

it, we met again in secret to discuss it, and our overpowering

passion for one another reduced that meeting to absurdity…

Presently the idea of children crept between us. It came in from

all our conceptions of life and public service; it was, we found, in

the quality of ourminds that physical love without children is a

little weak, timorous, more than a little shameful. With

imaginative people there very speedily comes a time when that

realisation is inevitable. We hadn'tthought of that before-it

isn't natural tothink of that before. We hadn'tknown. There is

no literature in English dealing with such things.

There is a necessary sequence of phases in love. These came in

their order, and with them, unanticipated tarnishings on the first

bright perfection of ourrelations. For a time these developing

phases were no more than a secret and private trouble between us,

little shadows spreading by imperceptible degrees across that vivid

and luminous cell.

8

The Handitch election flung me suddenly into prominence.

It is still only two years since that struggle, and I will not

trouble the reader with a detailed history of events that must be

quite sufficiently present in hismind for my purpose already. Huge

stacks of journalism have dealt with Handitch and its significance.

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