rcasm, "was utterly ignored. I forget whether they were Agnostics,
Buddhists, or Christians. They certainly suffered for their creed.
But"--his voice softened and deepened--"at any rate, the woman suffered
most!"

Her lips parted, her eyes were intent upon him.

"You have lived with Sisters of Mercy in a Convent," went on Saxham. "You
know of their lives even more than I--greatly to my advantage--have
learned. Energetic, useful, stirring, active, never complaining, always
ready to make the best of the world as they find it, and help others to do
the same; always regarding it as the preparatory school or
training-college for a state of being infinitely greater, nobler, and more
glorious than anything the merely mundane imagination can conceive--you
can realise how infinitely to the nuns' advantage is the contrast between
them and the laywomen of Society, peevish, hysterical, neurotic, sensual,
and bored. But before these chastened, temperate bodies, these serene and
well-balanced minds attained the state of self-control and crossed the
Rubicon of resignation, what struggles their owners must have
undergone!--what ordeals of anguish they must have endured! Did that never
strike you?"

Her lips were pale, and there were shadows under her eyes. She bent her
head.

"The woman, who was not a nun, did for the sake of a man what the nun
feels supernaturally called upon to do for her God," said Saxham. "She
thrust her hand deep into her woman's bosom, and dragged out her woman's
heart, and wrung from it every natural human yearning, and purged it--or
thought she purged it--of every earthly desire, before she laid the
pulseless, emptied thing down before his feet for him to tread upon. And
that is what he did!"

He heard her pant softly, and saw her hand move upward to her beating
heart. His deadly earnestness appalled her. Was he not fighting for what
was more than life to him? He folded his arms over his great chest, and
said:

"For ten years he and she lived together in a union called ideal by
ignorant enthusiasts and high-minded cranks. Then she drooped and
died--victim of the revolt of outraged Nature. A little before the end
they sent for me. I said to the man: 'A child would have saved her!' And
he--I can hear him now, answering: 'Ah! but that would have nullified all
the use and purpose of our example for humanity.' The idiot--the abortive,
impossible, dreary idiot! And if ever there was a woman intended by
wholes