"Then you as the rector of one of the most influential churches in the city will doubtless agree that religion must be sane and reasonable in its demands to-day or it will lose more followers among the educated--and education is constantly spreading--than it gains from the ignorant and superstitious?" "Assuredly." "I, on my side, as a layman--whatever our differences of precise faith and dogma--am glad to bear witness that the present social world could do without true religion less than ever before." The summary pleased Mr. Prentiss. It was reasonable and progressive. "We are entirely in accord there," he answered heartily. "As I supposed. Then it obviates the necessity of feeling my way. With some clergymen I should not venture to take anything unorthodox for granted, but I believed that we should readily find a common ground of agreement." The assertion was regarded by Mr. Prentiss as a compliment. Nevertheless he perceived that it behooved him to mark the limits of his liberality. "The essence of Christianity has nothing to fear either from the higher criticism or the modern world's lack of interest in moribund dogma. May I not say with Paul 'but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before'?" "And from that point of view may I ask why you have felt constrained to separate Mrs. Stuart and me?" There was a brief pause. The rector had not the remotest intention of shirking responsibility, but he wished the precise truth to appear. "It was Mrs. Stuart's own decision." "I asked her in good faith, after an attachment of several years, to become my wife. She loves me fondly, as I do her. She would have married me had you not convinced her that to do so would be a sin." "I told Mrs. Stuart that from the standpoint of her highest duty as a Christian woman, it would be a sin. Not unpardonable sin, if finite intelligence may venture to distinguish the grades of human error, but conduct incompatible with the highest spirituality--and modern spirituality, Mr. Perry." There was a doughty ring to the rector's tone, betokening that he was not averse to crossing swords with his visitor. "Why would it be a sin?" Mr. Prentiss knocked the ash from his cigar and held up the glowing tip. "Do you not know?" he asked, fixing his gaze squarely on his antagonist, so that he seemed to attack instead of defend. "Because she has a husband living--a brute of a husband who, after dragging her down, deserted her shamefully; a husband whom she has ceased to love and from whom the law of this community would grant her a divorce." "Proceed." "Because the Church has seen fit to stigmatize as evil that which the State sanctions in a matter vitally affecting the earthly happiness of the human sexes."