"Nor I," said the Idiot. "I don't believe even Mr. Bib here would advocate anything of the sort. I was merely trying to make clear to the Doctor, my dear lady, why I have never attempted to make some woman happy for a week and a martyr for the rest of time. It is due to my deep admiration for the whole feminine sex, and not, as he seemed to think, to a dislike of feminine society. The trace of polygamy which you seem to find in my discourse is purely academic, and it is clear to me that you have quite misunderstood my scheme. A true[Pg 29] marriage, one of those absolutely indestructible companionships that we read about in poetry, involves so many more things than any ordinary human being is really capable of, that one who thinks about the matter at all cannot resist the temptation to speculate on how things might be if they were different. The active man of affairs these busy times needs many diverse things in the way of companionship. He needs a helpmate along so many different lines that no single daughter of Eve can reasonably hope to supply them all. For example, if a man marries a woman who is deeply interested in Ibsen and Bernard Shaw abroad, and deep thinkers like William J. Bryan and Thomas Riley Marshall at home, she no doubt makes him ecstatically happy in those solemn moments when his mind wishes to grapple understandingly with the infinite. But suppose that poor chap comes home some[Pg 30] night worn to a frazzle with the worries and complications of his business affairs, his spirit fairly yearning for something fluffy and intellectually completely restful, do you suppose for a moment that he is going to be lifted out of the morass of his woe by a conversation with that lady of his on the subject of the Inestimable Infinitude of the Protoplasmic Suffragette as outlined by Pro