In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again.... We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.

Bagnold frames marriage as a private realm where social performance (“manners to keep up”) falls away. Spouses can accuse each other fiercely, yet those charges are not “real criticism” in the public, status-threatening sense, because each partner knows the other’s long history and vulnerabilities. The image of the “ancient child” suggests that adulthood is a veneer: under stress or intimacy, earlier selves reappear—petulant, needy, playful, unguarded. The “luxury of the wedding ring” is thus not romance but permission: to be seen without shame, to be imperfect without becoming absurd, and to feel “ageless” because one is recognized across time rather than judged as a role in society.