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THE AGENT.
Perhaps I can, and perhaps I can’t. I’m a bachelor myself, Miss,
and that means that I’ve thought up many a scheme to get out of marriage myself.

HELEN.
( outraged )

You old scoundrel!

THE AGENT.
Oh, it’s not so bad as you may think, Miss. I’ve always gone through the marriage ceremony to please them. But that’s not what I call marriage.

GEORGE.
Then what do you call marriage?

HELEN.
Yes, I’d like to know!

THE AGENT.
Marriage, my young friends, is an iniquitous arrangement devised by the Devil himself for driving all the love out of the hearts of lovers. They start out as much in love with each other as you two are today, and they end by being as sick of the sight of each other as you two will be five years hence if I don’t find a way of saving you alive out of the Devil’s own trap. It’s not lack of love that’s the trouble with marriage–it’s marriage itself. And when I say marriage, I don’t mean promising to love, honour, and obey, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health till death do you part–that’s only human nature to wish and to attempt. And it might be done if it weren’t for the iniquitous arrangement of marriage.

GEORGE.
( puzzled )

But what is the iniquitous arrangement?

THE AGENT.
Ah, that’s the trouble! If I tell you, you won’t believe me. You’ll go ahead and try it out, and find out what all the unhappy ones have found out before you. Listen to me, my children. Did you ever go on a picnic?

( He looks from one to the other–they stand astonished and silent.)

Of course you have. Every one has. There is an instinct in us which makes us go back to the ways of our savage ancestors–to gather about a fire in the forest, to cook meat on a pointed stick, and eat it with our fingers. But how many books would you write, young man, if you had to go back to the campfire every day for your lunch? And how many new dances would you invent if you lived eternally in the picnic stage of civilization? No! the picnic is incompatible with everyday living. As incompatible as marriage.

GEORGE.
But–

HELEN.
But–

THE AGENT.
Marriage is the nest-building instinct, turned by the Devil himself into an institution to hold the human soul in chains. The whole story of marriage is told in the old riddle: “Why do birds in their nests agree? Because if they don’t, they’ll fall out.” That’s it. Marriage is a nest so small that there is no room in it for disagreement. Now it may be all right for birds to agree, but human beings are not built that way. They disagree, and home becomes a little hell. Or else they do agree, at the expense of the soul’s freedom stifled in one or both.

HELEN.
Yes, but tell me–

GEORGE.
Ssh!

THE AGENT.
Yet there is the nest-building instinct. You feel it, both of you. If you don’t now, you will as soon as you are married. If you are fools, you will try to live all your lives in a love-nest; and you will imprison your souls within it, and the Devil will laugh.

HELEN.
( to George )

I am beginning to be afraid of him.

GEORGE.
So am I.