equivocate, my dear friend. This is the ideal of the Christian Church in respect to marriage and divorce. Invoke the human law for your protection against your husband if you will, but he is still your husband in the eyes of God, and if you wed another you commit adultery." Constance, seeming like a breathing statue, save for her odd disfigurement, her arms before her at full length, her hands folded one upon the other, heard her sentence and love's banishment. Already she felt the thrill of a solemn impulse to bear this cross laid upon her, not as a cross but as a fresh opportunity for service, yet she said: "Then the law of the church and the law of the State stand opposed to each other!" She spoke in soliloquy as it were, phrasing an existing condition for the explanation of which her intelligence still lacked the key. Mr. Prentiss drew himself up. "Yes, they stand opposed, as in so many other instances. The law of the State is for the weak; the law of the church--of Christ--is for the strong. Verily the church has been magnanimous and forbearing. It has resigned to the State little by little control of the social machinery. But here, where the foundations of society are at stake, it behooves her to stand firm. The law of spirit is at war with the law of flesh. Monogamy is the corner-stone of Christian civilization." "And hence it is that marriage is a sacrament; that the marriage bond bears the seal of heaven," added Mrs. Wilson ardently, as the rector, contented with his metaphor, stopped short in his righteous foray. "If my marriage was made in heaven, we were ill-mated," retorted Constance. The thought seemed so repugnant to her that she revolted at it. But Mr. Prentiss, like a true physician of the soul, was equal to the emergency. "The choice was yours, and you made a dreadful mistake. Have you yourself not said so? Shall you not pay the penalty, my daughter? You thought you knew him whom you married." "Oh, yes, indeed; but I was very young." "May they not all say the same? And yet," pursued the rector, in a tone of proselytizing triumph, "the demon of divorce lurks at our firesides and, stalking through every walk of life, makes light of the holy tie as though it were of straw, mocking the solemn associations of the family, and taking from the innocent child the refining and safe-guarding influence of a stable, unsullied home. Yet the State stands by and winks at--aye, connives at and promotes the foul programme, rehabilitating shallowness and vice through the respectable red seal of the law. Yes, there are two standards. As a modern priest I am aware of the sophistry of the criticism, for who, if the church does not, will stand as the protector of the home? And if it sometimes happens, as it must happen," he concluded in an exalted whisper, "that the apparent earthly happiness of one must be sacrificed for the good of the many, I know that you are not the woman to falter."