Loretta leaned back on the lounge where she was sitting and clasped her hands behind her head. She appeared to be at a loss to find words to express her feelings. "And you mean to tell me that you've let that man go--the man you love and who'd give you a fine home and be a fond husband to you--for such a reason as that?" "Yes," answered Constance, stanchly. "Then all I can say is you didn't deserve such luck. He's too good for you." Loretta's conviction went so deep that she had become grave, and, so to speak, dignified in her language. "He's too good for any woman I know," Constance felt impelled to assert. "But for both our sakes, all the same, it was my duty not to marry him. Mr. Perry knows my reasons and--and respects them." Constance had wondered many times what her lover's present emotions were, but she chose to take no less than this for granted. "If he loves you as much as I guess he does, he must just hate you, Constance Stuart. My! Think of throwing up a chance like that." Then suddenly a thought occurred to Loretta, and leaning forward she asked tensely, "Does _she_ know?" The suggestion of resentment on Gordon's part had been to Constance like a dash of scalding water. The question just put served as a restorative. "Mrs. Wilson? It was she who advised me to let him go. She agrees with me entirely." Loretta looked astonished and disappointed; then she frowned. "Just because you've been married once? Not if you got a divorce?" "Never, so long as my husband is alive and we are liable to meet in the flesh." Constance realized that her phraseology had a clerical sound; still she felt that she had a right to the entire arsenal of the church. "And she believes that too, does she? Believes that it would be wicked for a good looking, hard-working girl, whose husband had left her in the lurch, and may be dead for all she knows or cares, to get a divorce and marry again? And that's the Church? My! but it's the crankiest thing I ever heard. That's the sort of thing which sets the common folk who use their wits against religion. There's no sense in it. She's a widow; would she refuse to marry again if the right man came along?" "That's different," said Constance, perceiving that an answer was expected. "And what's the difference? It's all right to be spliced to another man in three months after the breath is out of the first one's body, as some of them do, but impure to marry again so long as the husband who has dragged you round by the hair of your head is liable to drop in. If it comes to that, and marriages are made in heaven, as the clergy say, what do the dead husbands and wives think about second marriages anyway? I'd be real jealous if I were dead." "The Church has thought it all out and come to the conclusion that it is the best rule for human society."