For in some such way will every woman cry. The very purity of her soul will rise to bar out the love that is of earth, earthy—the beautiful human love so young, so tender-eyed and warm-fingered, and with the lovely earth-light that is about its brows. And then, when the soul grows weary of the pallid thoughts, when the chill of the shadows strikes through—when the walls grow cold and the soul lifts iron bar and chain to let in the human sunshine, then the pale images that throng the house gather and are frightened at the very joy of the sun, and they try to shut the door again against the shining, and sit sorrowful in a trembling dark.
The cry of the woman is, “Give me soul! Give me spirituality!” Oh, loved hand! Oh, eyes! Oh, kissed lips and fondled hair! The woman’s love gives to each of you a soul. You will shine for her in her nethermost heaven.
“Tell me not of my love,” she cries, “that it is corporeal and must fade! Tell me only that it is of the spirit, a fond and heavenly light, such as never was in earthly sunrise or in evening star! A soul, but not a body! An essence, but no substance! It is too lovely to be of earth, too sweet to be only of this failing human frame. Its speech is the speech of angels, and its eyes are like the cherubim. Tell me not that it is not all of the soul!” So, until she dreams the last dream of love in earth-gardens, until she closes her soul’s eyes to dream of the humanity of love, the dignity of human passion, until then she perfumes the lily and paints the rose.
When the temperament that loves much and is oversensitive opens the gates of its sense to human passion, if its spiritual side recoils, it recoils with self-renunciation and with tears. The pain of such renunciation makes woman’s soul weak. Its self-probings and the whips of its conscience, made a very inquisitor, form for her a present horror. She cries out for the old dream, the old ideal, the old faith! It is the tears she sheds for this which drop upon the wall of the world’s convention and temper it to steel.
“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh. For, if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”
The droning voice of the reader hummed in Margaret’s ears. She came to herself again, almost with a start, dimly conscious that the woman in crêpe in the next pew was watching her narrowly. She must sit out the service. She fell to studying the pattern of the embroidery on the altar cloths. It was in curiously woven arabesques, grouped about the monogram of Christ. Anything to withdraw her eyes from the face of the reader, for which she was beginning to feel a growing and unreasoning repulsion.
Throughout the remainder of the sermon she kept her gaze upon her open Bible, turning up mechanically all the cross references to the word “flesh.” She followed the contradistinction of flesh and spirit through the New Testament. It was the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, contrary the one to the other. The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life—these all of the world.
The voice of the priest ran along in pauseless flow. It seemed to Margaret that he was repeating, with infinite variations, the same words over and over: “So they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”
As she rose for the final benediction, her knees felt weak and she trembled violently. She remembered what happened afterward only confusedly. The next thing she really knew was the sense of a moist apostolic palm pressed against her forehead as she half sat on the stone bench to the right of the entrance, and a smooth, rounded voice saying: