"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."