"I am afraid I do not wholly agree with your point of view," answered Mrs. Greyson, roused by the doubt in her own mind to a need to combat the assumption that the marriage was a mistake. "I certainly do not feel that the mere ceremony is the great point. See!" she continued, becoming more animated, and half involuntarily saying aloud what she had so often said in her own mind; "a man makes a woman love him. As time goes on, he outgrows her. It is no fault of hers. Why should the fact that he has or has not come into the marriage relations affect her claims on him? Isn't he in honor bound to marry her?" "But suppose," Edith returned, "that he has not only outgrown her but made some other woman love him too?" It was merely a chance shot of argument, but it smote Helen so that she trembled as she sat. "Is not that woman to be considered?" Edith continued. "Is the good of the man to count for nothing? Mr. Herman is sacrificed to an old mistake. Perhaps it is right that he should pay the price of his error; and that in the end it will be overruled for his good, we may hope. But it is hard to have patience now with the state of things." Helen tapped her teaspoon nervously against her cup. "But what can be done?" "Nothing," Mrs. Fenton said, without the slightest hesitation. "You and I may think these things, but it would be a crime for Mr. Herman to think them." "It might be cowardice to yield to them," responded Helen; "but how crime? And how can one help the thoughts from turning whithersoever they will?" Edith pushed back her plate, leaned forward with folded arms resting upon the edge of the table. She flushed a little, as she did sometimes when she felt it her duty to say something to her husband which it was hard to utter. "I do not think you and I agree in this," she said, in a voice which her earnestness made somewhat lower than before. "Marriage is to me a sacrament, and this very fact gives it a nature different from ordinary promises. We promise to love until death do us part. To me that is as imperative as any vow I can make to God and man." "But love," Helen urged, with a somewhat perplexed air, "is not a thing to be coerced." "It must be," Edith returned, inflexibly. "Even if my husband ceased to love me, that does not absolve me. I must fulfil my promise and my duty." "But," Helen responded, doubtfully and slowly, "it seems to me a sacrilege to live with a man after one has ceased to love him." "But I would love him," Edith broke in almost fiercely. "That is just the point. One must refuse to cease to love him." "But if he ceased to love her?" A flush came into Edith's clear cheek, and her eyes shone. Half unconsciously to herself, she was fighting with the doubts which would now and then rise in her own mind of her husband's affection.