d I cannot see that the character of my own daughter has deteriorated
because she has got a divorce from a man with whom she was profoundly
out of sympathy--of harmony. On the contrary, she seems more of a person
than she was; she has clearer, saner views of life; she has made her
mistake and profited by it. Her views changed--Victor Warren's did not.
She began to realize that some other woman might have an influence over
his life--she had none, simply because he did not love her. And love is
not a thing we can compel."

"You are making it very hard for me, Mrs. Constable," he said. "You
are now advocating an individualism with which the Church can have no
sympathy. Christianity teaches us that life is probationary, and if we
seek to avoid the trials sent us, instead of overcoming them, we find
ourselves farther than ever from any solution. We have to stand by our
mistakes. If marriage is to be a mere trial of compatibility, why go
through a ceremony than which there is none more binding in human and
divine institutions? One either believes in it, or one does not. And,
if belief be lacking, the state provides for the legalization of
marriages."

"Oh!" she exclaimed.

"If persons wish to be married in church in these days merely because
it is respectable, if such be their only reason, they are committing
a great wrong. They are taking an oath before God with reservations,
knowing that public opinion will release them if the marriage does not
fulfil their expectations."

For a moment she gazed at him with parted lips, and pressing her
handkerchief to her eyes began silently to cry. The sudden spectacle, in
this condition, of a self-controlled woman of the world was infinitely
distressing to Hodder, whose sympathies were even more sensitive than
(in her attempt to play upon them) she had suspected... She was aware
that he had got to his feet, and was standing beside her, speaking with
an oddly penetrating tenderness.

"I did not mean to be harsh," he said, "and it is not that I do not
understand how you feel. You have made my duty peculiarly difficult."

She raised up to him a face from which the mask had fallen, from which
the illusory look of youth had fled. He turned away... And presently she
began to speak again; in disconnected sentences.

"I so want her to be happy--I cannot think, I will not think that she
has wrecked her life--it would be too unjust, too cruel. You cannot know
what it is to be a woman!"