Her love and Farquharson’s was born of conflict and sacrifice. It is the only love which survives. For years her life had been actively paralyzed; the frozen blood in her veins had warmed at his touch. When, at parting, she had seen his eyes kindle at the reflection of the light in her own, her heart had leapt radiantly, as though for the first time conscious of its power. Yet now at the very moment when life had opened out limitlessly, she must turn her back upon it, must shut out the glowing picture. Must she shut it out? Must she? Would he wish it? She could give him the human happiness which he craved, peace and oblivion. Peace, when he had left his wife? And what of Evelyn herself? Before her stretched two paths. Which should she take? There were voices in her ear; the voice of her director, stern, implacable; the voice of conscience, loud and shrill; Cummings’ voice, grieved and pitiful. "Marriage is a sacrament," said one; "how have you observed it?" "You have abandoned yourself to sin; you have renounced your safeguards of salvation, abjuring the help of your creed for the sake of a passing illusion," said another. "Alas! because of you, Christ is crucified daily," said the third. "Not a wound of His but bleeds afresh when you sin." "How can there be aught but eternal damnation for him who sets his hand to the plough and turns back?" asked the first. "Faith encompassed you as a garment," said the second. "You have rent its mantle. You have stripped yourself to stand in voluntary wantonness before the eyes of men, you who were made in the image of your Maker, upon whose brow there has been set the seal which for ever places you apart from your fellow’s—the mark of God by which He knows His own, that you are ready to sear now and efface." "You plead love as your excuse," said the third sadly. "But is it love to drag down the soul of another into eternal conflict? A mother refuses her child what it wants, although it hurts her to deny him, because she knows he cannot take the thing he would without harm. God knows best." "It is the eleventh hour," said the first; "but the Church has spoken and you must obey. Therein lies her power; she does not plead, but she demands. You subscribed to her irrevocable tenets as a child; they hold you still. No merely human power is mighty enough to withstand her, because she rests upon unshakable foundations, and you, unstable and derelict as you are, still know that from afar the beacon of light shines, that although you have strayed now from your Mother, she will guide you to the end." A derelict—a human derelict. Yes, it was true—the words described her.