keenly conscious of the
moral ban under which she lay.

She was the daughter of a clergyman, she had been religiously brought
up, and she writhed under the terrible consciousness that her life was a
sin against her God. At first she went to church, but everything she
heard there sent the iron deeper into her soul; if there were comforting
promises to repentant Magdalens, there was nothing but wrath and
threatening for those who continued in their sin. By-and-by she left off
going to church. Philip was a sceptic, most of his friends were the
same. Virginia listened to their talk, and, in time, her faith began to
waver; she liked to think they were right, and that the Bible was a
string of fables; it lessened her sense of criminality and remorse, but
it cut her off forever from the only consolation a woman can know, when
her hour of trial comes. If man could supply the place of God and
Saviour now, whither should she fly when he was torn from her or grew
weary of her?

She was glad that she had no children--could she live to be shamed by
them, scorned by them? And yet--how sweet it would have been to feel
clinging arms about her neck; to hear little voices lisp the sweetest
word on earth to a mother's ear, if only she might have been as other
mothers--as other wives! Never, never once had she breathed or hinted a
wish that Philip should marry her; she had a superstitious dread that
once the chain was forged his love for her would cease--marriage could
not now reinstate her in the world's sight--she had ceased to remember
that her life was a crime. She had heard it said so often that marriage
was simply an institution founded upon expediency; that all systems
having been tried, the one that worked best was the union of a man to
one wife, that she herself began to doubt its being a heaven-ordained
institution, and the only state tolerated by Divine Providence. But if
she ceased to feel herself actually a guilty and sinning woman, she was
none the less sensitive to the world's scorn; to the bitterness of
holding a position that society refused to tolerate or to recognize.

But, after all, she knew happiness which is denied to nine-tenths of
women, nay, to ninety-nine out of a hundred. She enjoyed the passionate,
unfailing devotion of the man whom she adored--no harsh word ever
crossed his lips to her--she was his first care and thought--no party of
pleasure ever tempted him from her side--nothing but the claim of
busines