"Nance--I'm afraid you're _not_ pleasing me--if I catch your drift. Must I point out the difference--the spiritual difference? That misguided woman wanted to desert her husband merely because he had hurt her pride--her vanity--by certain alleged attentions to other women, concerning the measure of which I had no knowledge. That was a case where the cross must be borne for the true refining of that dross of vanity from her soul. Her husband is of her class, and her life with him will chasten her. While here--what have we here?" He began to pace the floor as he was wont to do when he prepared a sermon. "Here we have a flagrant example of what is nothing less than spiritual miscegenation--that's it!--why didn't I think of that phrase before--spiritual miscegenation. A rattle-brained boy, with the connivance of a common magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance with a person inferior to him in every point of view--birth, breeding, station, culture, wealth--a person, moreover, who will doubtless be glad to relinquish her so-called rights for a sum of money. Can that, I ask you, be called a _marriage?_ Can we suppose an all-wise God to have joined two natures so ill-adapted, so mutually exclusive, so repellent to each other after that first glamour is past. Really, such a supposition is not only puerile but irreverent. It is the conventional supposition, I grant, and theoretically, the unvarying supposition of the Church; but God has given us reasoning powers to use fearlessly--not to be kept superstitiously in the shackles of any tradition whatsoever. Why, the very Church itself from its founding is an example of the wisdom of violating tradition when it shall seem meet--it has always had to do this." "I see, Allan--every case must be judged by itself; every marriage requires a special ruling--" "Well--er--exactly--only don't get to fancying that you could solve these problems. It's difficult enough for a priest." "Oh, I'm positive a mere woman couldn't grapple with them--she hasn't the mind to! All she is capable of is to choose who shall think for her." "And of course it would hardly do to announce that I had counselled a certain procedure of divorce and re-marriage--no matter how flagrant the abuse, nor how obvious the spiritual equity of the step. People at large are so little analytical." "'Flexible,' Mr. Browett told his sister you were. He was right--you _are_ flexible, Allan--more so than I ever suspected." "Nance--you _please_ me--you are a good girl. Now I'm going up to Bernal. Bernal certainly pleases me. Of course I shall do the handsome thing by him if he acts along the lines our talk has indicated." She still sat in the falling dusk, in the chair she had taken two hours before, when Aunt Bell came in, dressed for dinner. "Mercy, child! Do you know how late it is?" "What did you say, Aunt Bell?" "I say do you know how late it is?" "Oh--not too late!" "Not too late--for what?"