Before this cry he was silent.

"I don't ask anything of God except that she shall have a chance, and it
seems to me that he is making the world better--less harsh for women."

He did not reply. And presently she looked up at him again, steadfastly
now, searchingly. The barriers of the conventions were down, she had
cast her pride to the winds. He seemed to read in her a certain relief.

"I am going to tell you something, Mr. Hodder, which you may think
strange, but I have a reason for saying it. You are still a young man,
and I feel instinctively that you have an unusual career before you.
You interested me the first time you stepped into the pulpit of St.
John's--and it will do me good to talk to you, this once, frankly. You
have reiterated to-day, in no uncertain terms, doctrines which I once
believed, which I was brought up to think infallible. But I have lived
since then, and life itself has made me doubt them.

"I recognize in you a humanity, a sympathy and breadth which you are
yourself probably not aware of, all of which is greater than the rule
which you so confidently apply to fit all cases. It seems to me that
Christ did not intend us to have such rules. He went beyond them, into
the spirit.

"Under the conditions of society--of civilization to-day, most marriages
are merely a matter of chance. Even judgment cannot foresee the
development of character brought about by circumstances, by environment.
And in many marriages I have known about intimately both the man and the
woman have missed the most precious thing that life can give something
I cannot but think--God intends us to have. You see,"--she smiled at him
sadly--"I am still a little of an idealist.

"I missed--the thing I am talking about, and it has been the great
sorrow of my life--not only on my account, but on my husband's. And so
far as I am concerned, I am telling you the truth when I say I should
have been content to have lived in a log cabin if--if the gift had
been mine. Not all the money in the world, nor the intellect, nor the
philanthropy--the so-called interests of life, will satisfy me for its
denial. I am a disappointed woman, I sometimes think a bitter woman. I
can't believe that life is meant to be so. Those energies have gone into
ambition which should have been absorbed by--by something more worth
while.

"And I can see so plainly now that my husband would have been far, far
happier with another kind of woman. I drew him away f