"I understand now how many mistakes I made before I finally
rid you of myself, and gave you a chance to live your life in
your own way unharassed by the interference of a young,
ignorant, and probably aggressive man.

"Your aversion to motherhood was, after all, your own affair.
Man has no right to demand that of woman. I took a very
bullying and intolerant attitude toward you--not, as I now
realise, from any real conviction on the subject, but because
I liked and wanted children, and also because I was
influenced by the cant of the hour--the fashion being to
demand of woman, on ethical grounds, quantitative
reproduction as a marriage offering to the Almighty. As
though indiscriminate and wholesale addition to humanity were
an admirable and religious duty. Nothing, even in the Old
Testament, is more stupid than such a doctrine; no child
should ever be born unwelcome to both parents.

"I am sorry I could not find your circle of friends
interesting. I sometimes think I might have, had you and I
been mutually sympathetic. But the situation was impossible;
our ideas, interests, convictions, tastes, were radically at
variance; we had absolutely nothing in common to build on.
What marriage ties could endure the strain of such
conditions? The fault was mine, Winifred; I am sorry for
you.

"I don't know much about anything, but, thinking as clearly
and as impersonally as it is in me to think, I begin to
believe that divorce, far from deserving the stigma attached
to it, is a step forward in civilisation.