en thought prompted the question.

"She left just before you came in," answered Mrs. Dexter.

"And your mind has been disturbed, not tranquillized, by her visit?"

"I am disturbed, as you see."

"On what subject did she speak?" asked Mrs. De Lisle.

"You know her usual theme?"

"Inharmonious marriages?"

"Yes."

"I do not wonder that you were disturbed. How could it be
otherwise?"

"She gives utterance to many truths," said Mrs. Dexter.

"But even truth may be so spoken as to have all the evil effect of
error," was promptly answered.

"Can truth ever do harm? Is it not the mind's light? Truth shows us
the way in which we may walk safely," said Mrs. Dexter, with some
earnestness of manner.

"Light, by which the eye sees, will become a minister of
destruction, if the eye is inflamed. A mind diseased cannot bear
strong gleams of truth. They will blind and deceive, rather than
illustrate. The rays must be softened. Of the many truths to which
Mrs. Anthony gave utterance this morning, which most affected your
mind?"

"She spoke," said Mrs. Dexter, after a little reflection, "of
natural affinities and repulsions, which take on sometimes the
extreme condition of idiosyncrasies. Of conjunctions of soul in true
marriages, and of disjunction and disgust where no true marriage
exists."

"Did she explain what she understood by a true marriage?" asked Mrs.
De Lisle.

"I do not remember any formal explanation. But her meaning was
obvious."

"What, then, did she mean?"

A little while Mrs. Dexter thought, and then answered--

"She thinks that men and women are born partners, and that only they
who are fortunate enough to meet are ever happy in marriage--are, in
fact, really married."

"How is a woman to know that she is rightly mated?" asked Mrs. De
Lisle.

"By the law of affinities. The instincts of our nature are never at
fault."

"So the thief who steals your watch will say the instincts of his
nature all prompted to the act. If our lives were orderly as in the
beginning, Mrs. Dexter, we might safely follow the soul's unerring
instincts. But, unfortunately, this is not the case; and instinct
needs the law of revelation and the law of reason for its guide."

"You believe in true, interior marriages?" said Mrs. Dexter.

"Yes, marriages for eternity."

"And that they are made here?"

Mrs. De Lisle did not answer immediately.

"The preparation for eternal marriage is here," she said, speaking
thou