he marriage service, since God has already
joined us together. And it is not through our own wills, somehow, but
through his. Divorce would not only be a crime against the spirit, it
would be an impossibility while we feel as we do. But if love should
cease, then God himself would have divorced us, punished us by taking
away a priceless gift of which we were not worthy. He would have shut
the gates of Eden in our faces because we had sinned against the Spirit.
It would be quite as true to say 'whom God has put asunder no man may
join together.' Am I hurting you?"

Her hand was on the arm of his chair, and the act of laying his own on
it was an assurance stronger than words. Alison sighed.

"Yes, I believed you would understand, even though I expressed myself
badly,--that you would help me, that you have found a solution. I used
to regard the marriage service as a compromise, as a lowering of the
ideal, as something mechanical and rational put in the place of the
spiritual; that it was making the Church, and therefore God, conform to
the human notion of what the welfare of society ought to be. And it is
absurd to promise to love. We have no control over our affections. They
are in God's hands, to grant or withdraw.

"And yet I am sure--this is new since I have known you--that if such a
great love as ours be withdrawn it would be an unpardonable wrong for
either of us to marry again. That is what puzzles me--confounds the
wisdom I used to have, and which in my littleness and pride I thought
so sufficient. I didn't believe in God, but now I feel him, through
you, though I cannot define him. And one of many reasons why I could
not believe in Christ was because I took it for granted that he taught,
among other things, a continuation of the marriage relation after love
had ceased to justify it."

Hodder did not immediately reply. Nor did Alison interrupt his silence,
but sat with the stillness which at times so marked her personality,
her eyes trustfully fixed on him. The current pulsing between them was
unbroken. Hodder's own look, as he gazed into the grate, was that of a
seer.

"Yes," he said at length, "it is by the spirit and not the letter of our
Lord's teaching that we are guided. The Spirit which we draw from the
Gospels. And everything written down there that does not harmonize with
it is the mistaken interpretation of men. Once the Spirit possesses us
truly, we are no longer troubled and confused by texts.

"