“He'll have to give me evidence of--of something that has already happened, then, won't he?” “The law calls that collusion also.” “Then what am I to do?” “Couldn't you get evidence somehow without taking it from him?” Charity was about to shake her head, but she nodded it violently. She remembered the detectives she had engaged and the superabundant evidence they had furnished her. She told McNiven about it and he was delighted till she reminded him that she had promised not to make use of Zada's name. McNiven told her that she had no other recourse, and advised her to see her husband. She said that it was hopeless and she expressed a bitter opinion of the law. It seemed harsher than the Church, especially harsh to those who did not flout its authority. While Charity talked McNiven let his pipe-smoke trail out of the window into the infinite where dreams fade from reality and often from memory, and he thought, “If I can help Jim and Charity to get together after all this blundering it will be a good job.” He was tempted to tell her that Jim was coming to see him, too, but he was afraid that she knew it. If he had told her--but there goes that eternal “if” again! CHAPTER III It is a fierce and searching test of a woman's mettle when first she is confronted with temptation to rebel against the control of her preacher. Men are used to it, and women must grow more and more used to it as they advance into their long-deferred heritage. Charity Coe Cheever was religious by every instinct. From childhood she had thrilled to the creed and the music and the eloquence of her Sundays. The beautiful industries of Christianity had engaged her. She had been happy within the walls and had felt that her piety gave her wings rather than chains. And then she came abruptly to the end of her tether. She found her soul revolted by a situation which her pastor commanded her to accept as her lifelong portion. She found that to tolerate, and by tolerating to collaborate in, the adultery of her husband and his mistress was better religion than to free herself from odious triplicity. She found that it was better religion to annul her womanhood and remain childless, husbandless, and comfortless than to claim the privileges, the freedoms, the renewing opportunities the law allowed. She came suddenly face to face with the terrifying fact that the State offered her help and strength that the Church denied her. She had reached indeed what the doleful balladists would call “the parting of the ways,” though no poet has yet chosen for his heroine the distraught wretch who is driven to the bleak refuge of divorce.