"Well--to return to Betts. This is May. Last August he had an attack of influenza, and went off to North Wales, to the sea, to recruit. He was away much longer than any one expected, and after about six weeks he wrote to my father to say that he should return to Hoddon Grey--with a wife. He had found a lady at Colwyn Bay, whom he had known as a girl. She was a widow, had just lost her father, with whom she lived, and was very miserable and forlorn. I need not say we all wrote the most friendly letters. She came, a frail, delicate creature, with one child. My mother did all she could for her, but was much baffled by her reserve and shrinking. Then--bit by bit--through some extraordinary chances and coincidences--I needn't go through it all--the true story came out." He looked away for a moment over the reaches of the park, evidently considering with himself what he could tell, and how far. "I can only tell you the bare facts," he said, at last. "Mrs. Betts was divorced by her first husband. She ran away with a man who was in his employment, and lived with him for two years. He never married her, and after two years he deserted her. She has had a wretched life since--with her child. Then Betts came along, whom she had known long ago. She threw herself on his pity. She is very attractive--he lost his head--and married her. Well now, what were we to do?" "They _are_ married?" said Marcia. "Certainly--by the law. But it is a law which matters nothing to us!" The voice had taken to itself a full challenging note. Marcia looked up. "Because--you think--divorce is wrong?" "Because--'What God has joined together let no man put asunder!'" "But there are exceptions in the New Testament?" The peach bloom on Marcia's cheek deepened as she bent over the daisy chain she was idly making. "Doubtful ones! The dissolution of marriage may itself be an open question. But, for all churchmen, the remarriage of divorced persons--and trebly, when it is asked for by the person whose sin caused the divorce!--is an absolutely closed one!" Marcia's mind was in a ferment. But her girlish senses were keenly alive to the presence beside her--the clean-cut classical face, the spiritual beauty of the eyes. Yet something in her shivered. "Suppose she was very unhappy with her first husband?" "Law cannot be based on hard cases. It is made to help the great multitude of suffering, sinning men and women through their lives." He paused a little, and then said, "Our Lord 'knew what was in man.'" The low tone in which the last words were spoken affected Marcia deeply, not so much as an appeal to religion, for her own temperament was not religious, as because they revealed the inner mystical life of the man beside her. She was suddenly filled again with a strange pride that he should have singled her out--to love her. But the rise of feeling was quickly followed by recoil. She looked up eagerly.