"But I would rather not listen to your arguments now," she interposed. "I am on your side already. My heart is, and--I think my common sense." His pulses gave a bound. "Then nothing can keep us apart!" he cried, pressing his lips upon her hands and kissing them again and again. "You are mine, we belong to one another. Why should a young and beautiful woman starve her being on such a plea, and reject such happiness as this?" She drew her hands gently away, and herself beyond his reach. "Ah, you mustn't. If my church objects, it must have a reason, and I must hear that reason, Gordon. I must consult with Mr. Prentiss--with him and others. He is not an outsider. He was my friend and helper in the bitterest hours of my life." "He will do his best to take you from me." She shivered. "How do you know?" "He cannot help himself. The canon of the Episcopal Church forbids a clergyman to marry one who has been divorced for any cause except adultery. The Catholic Church goes one step further and forbids altogether the remarriage of divorced persons. It does not recognize divorce. A large number of the clergy of your church are fiercely agitating the adoption of a similar absolute restriction. The two churches--and their attitude has stirred up other denominations--are seeking to fasten upon the American conscience an ideal inconsistent with the free development of human society." She caught at the phrase. "Yet it is an ideal." Gordon took a long breath. In the ardor of his mental independence he seemed to be seeking some fit word to epitomize his deduction. "It is a fetish!" he said, earnestly. "It represents the past--privilege--superstition--injustice, as I have already told you." "Oh, no," she murmured, "it cannot be simply that. You forget that I am a woman. You do not realize what the church means to me." "I remember that you are an American woman." The remark evidently impressed her. She pondered it briefly before she said, "I am, and I know how much that ought to mean. I wish to be worthy of it." She appeared troubled; then putting her hand to her head she rose, seeking instinctively an end of the interview. "I must think it over. You must not talk to me any more to-night. I did not realize how weak I am." Suddenly she exclaimed, "Ah, Gordon, you do not understand all! I forsook the church once in the pride of my heart. I wandered among false gods, and it took me back without a word of rebuke for my independence. I must do what is right this time--what is really right--at any cost." As she stood in the shadow, erect and piteous, but with the aspect of spiritual aspiration in her voice and figure, stalwart as he was in his sense of righteousness, he thought of Marguerite in the prison scene when Faust implores her to fly with him.