Can a “rule” be formulated that will precisely define the circumstances under which this contract can be broken—a rule that can cover all the concomitant disruptions and uncertainties? Probably not. Thus this most delicate and intimate of society’s regulations must remain agonizingly uncertain, the benefit in each case measured against the loss, with no easy or comprehensive answer readily available. We require the marriage contract, and at the same time we are painfully—perhaps intolerably—constrained by it. Some such paradox as this lies at the heart of “Souls Belated,” “Autres Temps . . .,” and “The Last Asset.” And each of these stories concludes not with an answer, but with an intriguing set of questions.

In “Souls Belated,” Lydia and Gannett have decided to flout society’s restrictions: Lydia has left her husband to enjoy “freedom” with the man she truly loves. Yet even as the story begins, the reader realizes that “freedom” has brought at least as much discomfort as it has brought joy. The lovers are sharing a compartment on a European train with a fellow passenger, and when he gathers himself to go, thereby leaving them in what might be cozy and romantic intimacy, “Lydia’s eye regretfully followed the shiny broadcloth of his retreating back till it lost itself in the cloud of touts and cab-drivers hanging about the station; then she glanced across at Gannett and caught the same regret in his look. They were both sorry to be alone.” Having fled the restrictions of society, Lydia and Gannett feel a perverse need for the presence of others: being together and in love is somehow not enough. To some extent the problem is superficial. A conversation à deux can be delightful, perhaps, only when it has been snatched out of the buzzing world of friends’ gossip and the clamoring want of family members. Gannett is more willing than Lydia to give voice to the dilemma; having renounced the rule-bound context of their former lives, they must discover or create another context. “We can’t travel forever, can we?” he asks. Yet the problem of context is only one component of their increasing discomfort. Lydia feels herself to be a “compromised” woman; that is, even though virtually none of the people they meet have the least glimmering of the situation, she has so absorbed the values of the world in which she was reared that she carries its injunction within her. No flight from that world can ever expunge its values from her sense of self. Thus she is left in a peculiar quandary. If Gannett marries her, she can never be certain that he has done so “freely.” He may love her and wish to declare that love by pledging a lifelong fidelity; however, he may merely feel guilty at having placed her in so awkward a situation—may marry her out of pity or a sense of duty. Moreover, she reflects pensively, if they defied marriage itself by their elopement, are they not merely hypocritical now to submit to marriage as a capitulation of sorts?

This story ends in a set of ambiguities. Do they really “love” each other? Can love even be measured under such irregular and stressful circumstances? And will their marriage be happier than the one Lydia left, or has the pain and disruption all been expended on an empty hope and blasted dreams?

“Autres Temps . . .” also addresses the aftermath of divorce, but it does so with different questions in mind. Its central character, Mrs. Lidcote, had extricated herself from the misery of an unhappy relationship many years before the story opens; and she did so not by running away with a lover, but merely by legally dissolving her marriage during an era when divorce stigmatized a woman and caused the members of polite society to shun her company. Thus she has spent a long time alone and pursuing an unobtrusive existence in Europe, having left her daughter Leila in the legal custody of the father. Now these many years later, Mrs. Lidcote has learned that Leila herself has been divorced and remarried, and the mother feels at last that she can be of use to her daughter—can comfort Leila in what must have become a state of exile and unhappiness. Yet an immense surprise awaits her return; Leila seems to require no such comforting: she and her friends bustle about their activities with unperturbed cheerfulness. Husbands and wives can now be discarded or exchanged, it would seem, with no real distress and no apparent loss of society’s acceptance or approval. Times have changed. Mrs. Lidcote’s traumatic experience is the product of a fogotten world and a former time (autres temps). Some major social revolution appears to have taken place. But if it has, its consequences may not extend far enough to affect Mrs. Lidcote’s situation; for although Leila does not suffer reprisal for her behavior, people still seem to remember her mother’s “shameful behavior,” and for reasons that are not altogether explicable, they still treat her as something of an outcast—or so she feels.