"But how do you reconcile such marriages as I speak of, with the spirit of Christ's teaching? I think you ought to answer me." "Oh! I can, perfectly," he answered; "the reconciliation is through suffering. What a poor woman in such a case must suffer makes for the salvation of her spirit. That is the spiritual fulfilment, and in such a case the justification of the law." "So then," I said, "sacrifice or suffering is the coherent thread of Christian philosophy?" "Suffering cheerfully borne," he answered. "You do not think," I said, "that there is a touch of extravagance in that? Would you say, for example, that an unhappy marriage is a more Christian thing than a happy one, where there is no suffering, but only love?" A line came between his brows. "Well!" he said at last, "I would say, I think, that a woman who crucifies her flesh with a cheerful spirit in obedience to God's law, stands higher in the eyes of God than one who undergoes no such sacrifice in her married life." And I had the feeling that his stare was passing through me, on its way to an unseen goal. "You would desire, then, I suppose, suffering as the greatest blessing for yourself?" "Humbly," he said, "I would try to." "And naturally, for others?" "God forbid!" "But surely that is inconsistent." He murmured: "You see, I have suffered." We were silent. At last I said: "Yes, that makes much which was dark quite clear to me." "Oh?" he asked. I answered slowly: "Not many men, you know, even in your profession, have really suffered. That is why they do not feel the difficulty which you feel in desiring suffering for others." He threw up his head exactly as if I had hit him on the jaw: "It's weakness in me, I know," he said. "I should have rather called it weakness in them. But suppose you are right, and that it's weakness not to be able to desire promiscuous suffering for others, would you go further and say that it is Christian for those, who have not experienced a certain kind of suffering, to force that particular kind on others?" He sat silent for a full minute, trying evidently to reach to the bottom of my thought. "Surely not," he said at last, "except as ministers of God's laws." "You do not then think that it is Christian for the husband of such a woman to keep her in that state of suffering--not being, of course, a minister of God?" He began stammering at that: "I--I----" he said. "No; that is, I think not-not Christian. No, certainly." "Then, such a marriage, if persisted in, makes of the wife indeed a Christian, but of the husband--the reverse." "The answer to that is clear," he said quietly: "The husband must abstain." "Yes, that is, perhaps, coherently Christian, on your theory: They would then both suffer. But the marriage, of course, has become no marriage. They are no longer one flesh." He looked at me, almost impatiently as if to say: Do not compel me to enforce silence on you!