“One day a doubt took possession of me. I grew desperate in my determination. On his return home, I faced him and demanded immediate marriage, refusing to live with him longer unless he took immediate steps to correct the mistakes of the past. I pleaded for the rights of his child, for my rights. Once more he renewed his fidelity and promised to arrange immediately his business so we could make the trip in a week or ten days. Meanwhile he secretly dissolved partnership, disposed of almost all his property, took a midnight train, without a good-by kiss, and left for parts unknown. “I sold off our furniture, wrote mother that husband and I had disagreed and had separated, that I would send her my little girl and would help support the family by teaching.” =The minister’s mistake.=--Then she said to the minister, “I never meant to be a sinner, I am living a pure life. What must I do?” The minister advised her to confess to the church what she had done and said that he would plead with the church to forgive and stand by her. If this woman had followed the minister’s advice she would have lost her position as a teacher, she would have lost her social standing, she would not have been given a sympathetic and loving welcome into the church, she would have brought disgrace upon her home and placed society’s stigma of illegitimacy upon her child. The minister would not have demanded a similar confession from the man who was far more guilty than she. That conscientious minister would insist upon restitution’s being made for stolen property, as a condition of divine forgiveness, but a libertine may pluck the lily of purity from a maiden’s brow, and rob his child of sacred birth, allow mother and child to die in poverty, their grocer’s and doctor’s bills to go unpaid, the public to bury them in the potter’s field, while he revels in luxury and enjoys social distinction, and no restitution is required in his case, as a condition of divine favor, membership in the church, or a triumphant entrance into endless bliss. =Blinded by the double standard.=--She could not meet the minister’s condition. He was conscientious and could not make what to him would have been a compromise with sin. Not fully appreciating that moral law is higher than civil law; that what is sometimes civilly wrong is morally right; that centuries of submission to the double standard of morals has so biased the public mind that even the best of society are incapable of always giving the wronged girl a square deal; she at last postponed her decision for the Christ. The meeting closed, later the school closed and then she left the city and her whereabouts became unknown to the minister.