"I didn't think he ever could do it," said she, shaking her head. "He is fighting a battle he has lost so often." "There is none who could help him so much in his struggle as you." "Oh, there," she answered quickly and bitterly, "I think you are mistaken. He has paid very little attention to me or my wishes for four or five years past." "Then," said the priest, "he has learned his lesson, for now he depends on you more than on any other person." She did not answer, but closed her eyes and clenched her fists as tightly as she could, summoning her will to resist. But she realized that her will, like her body, was not in health. The sick bed is the priest's harvest time. "My child," he said gently, "there is a human soul struggling for its salvation. Will you help or hinder it?" "I do not think that is quite a fair way to put it." "Not fair? With all my soul I believe it to be true. And, remember, in helping him to his salvation you are bringing your own nearer." "But must we consider everything, everything from the standpoint of salvation? Of course, I want to go to Heaven when I die, but I want to be as happy as I can here on earth, too. And that's impossible if I live with Jim." "If you had a child," he asked patiently, as if going clear back to the beginning again with a pupil that could not learn easily, "and he said to you, 'Mother, I don't want to go to school, for it makes me unhappy and I want to be as happy as I can,' would you let him have his way?" He paused, but she did not answer, so he went on to make his point clearer. "Of course you wouldn't if you loved your child. You would make him undergo discipline and accept instruction, if you wanted him to be a fine, strong, brave man. Our life on earth is but our school days--our preparation for the greater life to come. And we are not always allowed to seek immediate happiness any more than little children are." She felt that she was being overcome in argument by the priest, as everyone must be who accepts his fundamental premise, namely, that he is more intimately acquainted with the secrets of life and death than laymen are. But far below the reach of argument and theological dialectics, which are surface things, from the deep springs of her life the increasing warning flowed up to her consciousness that it was the abomination of a slave to embrace where she did not love. "Father," she said, not trying to argue any longer, but just to make him see, "Oh, don't you understand? Man and wife are so close together--like that." She placed her two palms together before her in the attitude of prayer. He raised his hand solemnly, to pronounce that phrase which perhaps more than any other has influenced human destinies, "_And they shall be two in one flesh_." "But to live so close with a man you don't love or care for, oh, that is vile, utterly, utterly vile."