"But even truth may be so spoken as to have all the evil effect of error," was promptly answered.
"Can truth ever do harm? Is it not the mind's light? Truth shows us the way in which we may walk safely," said Mrs. Dexter, with some earnestness of manner.
"Light, by which the eye sees, will become a minister of destruction, if the eye is inflamed. A mind diseased cannot bear strong gleams of truth. They will blind and deceive, rather than illustrate. The rays must be softened. Of the many truths to which Mrs. Anthony gave utterance this morning, which most affected your mind?"
"She spoke," said Mrs. Dexter, after a little reflection, "of natural affinities and repulsions, which take on sometimes the extreme condition of idiosyncrasies. Of conjunctions of soul in true marriages, and of disjunction and disgust where no true marriage exists."
"Did she explain what she understood by a true marriage?" asked Mrs. De Lisle.
"I do not remember any formal explanation. But her meaning was obvious."
"What, then, did she mean?"
A little while Mrs. Dexter thought, and then answered—
"She thinks that men and women are born partners, and that only they who are fortunate enough to meet are ever happy in marriage—are, in fact, really married."
"How is a woman to know that she is rightly mated?" asked Mrs. De Lisle.