"This is a strange coincidence, Constance. I have been face to face with this same issue for the past fortnight. My daughter has begun divorce proceedings against her husband in order to marry again. They simply were tired of each other; that is the true, flippant reason they are separating. Each is to marry someone else. Her light view of the marriage relation has almost broken my heart. And what is to blame? The low standard of society in respect to the sacredness of the marriage tie. I endeavored with all my soul to dissuade her, but in vain. I come from her to you. The circumstances of your two lives are very different, but is not the principle involved the same? My dear, if Lucille—my daughter—could have seen the question as you see it, I should have been a happy mother. You ask my opinion. I recognize the solemnity of the trust. A blissful future is before you if you marry, welfare for your children and yourself. But in the other scale of the balance are the eternal verities, the duty one owes to society, the fealty one owes to Christ. You spoke of beauty. The most beautiful life of all is that which embraces renunciation for a great cause, even at the cost of the most alluring human joys and privileges."
Gaining in fluency as she proceeded, because more and more enamoured of the cruel necessity of the sacrifice, Mrs. Wilson poured into these concluding words all the intensity of her nature. She would gladly have fallen on her knees and joined in ecstatic prayer with the victim had the demeanor of the latter given her the chance. Her heart was full of admiration and of pity for Constance and also of solicitude for the triumph of a human soul in behalf of an ideality which was at the same time the highest social wisdom. If for a moment her modern mind had revolted at the sternness of the sacrifice demanded, she was now spellbound by the shibboleth which meditation on her late experience had reaffirmed on her lips as a rallying cry, the safety of the home.
"You cannot be ignorant," she exclaimed in another burst of expression, "that the stability of the family—the greatest safeguard of civilization—is threatened. What is the happiness of the individual compared with the welfare of all? In this day of easy divorces and quick remarriages is it not your duty to heed the teaching of the Christian Church, which stands as the champion of the sacrament of marriage?"
Constance's mien during the delivery of this exhortation suggested that of a prisoner of war listening to sentence of death, one who yearned to live, but who was trying already to derive comfort from the consequent glory; yet a prisoner, too, who clung to life and who was not prepared to accept his doom, however splendid, without exhausting every possibility of escape. Though her face reflected spiritual appreciation of the great opportunity for service held out to her, and her nostrils quivered, her almost dauntless and obviously critical brow offered no encouragement to Mrs. Wilson's hope of a tumultuous quick surrender. She listened, weighing impartially the value of every word. But suddenly at the final sentences she quivered, as though they had pierced the armor of her suspended judgment, and inflicted a mortal wound.
"Would the church demand it absolutely?" she asked after a moment.
"Our church forbids remarriage except in case of divorce for adultery granted to the innocent party. The language of Christ in the gospel of Matthew seems to sanction this exception, contrary to His teaching as expressed in the other gospels. But there are many who maintain with the Roman Catholic Church that the marriage tie can be dissolved only by death."
"I know. I had them read to me this morning."
Though Mrs. Wilson regarded herself as a liberal constructionist of scriptural texts, and as in sympathy with the priests of her faith who glossed over or ignored biblical language justifying out-worn philosophy, she was glad now of the support of the letter of the Christian law for the great social principal involved. Divining by intuition what was working in the struggler's mind, and ever on the watch to satisfy her own standard as regards modern progressiveness of vision, she ventured this:
"Though the words of Christ seem far away—though His world was very different from ours, as perhaps you were thinking, the human needs of to-day are a grand and unanswerable vindication of His teachings and of the church's canon."
Constance looked up wonderingly. Was she dealing with a seer?