felt ‘agin’ ’em, anyway!” Yes! Even before his first disastrous marriage he could remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed. Parsons would have it that freedom of soul and body were quite different things! Pernicious doctrine! Body and soul could not thus be separated. Free will was the strength of any tie, and not its weakness. “I ought to have told Soames,” he thought, “that I think him comic. Ah! but he’s tragic, too!” Was there anything, indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own possessive instinct, who couldn’t see the sky for it, or even enter fully into what another person felt! “I must write and warn her,” he thought; “he’s going to have another try.” And all the way home to Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son which prevented him from posting back to Paris.⁠ ⁠…