only to save your own soul but to help some one else to
save theirs," she went on. "You have to exercise justice and mercy. You
have to forgive every day of your life, and"--she added--"to be
forgiven. Wouldn't that bore you?"

Boreham's heart thumped with consternation. It might take months to make
her take a reasonable view of marriage. She was more difficult than he
had anticipated.

"Marriage is a dreary business," continued May, "unless you go into it
with much prayer and fasting--Jeremiah again."

Into Boreham's consternation broke a sudden anger.

"That is why," continued May, "Herod ordered Mariamne to be beheaded,
and why the young woman who married the 'beloved disciple' said she
couldn't realise her true self and went off with Judas Iscariot." May
turned round and looked at him as she spoke.

"I was serious!" burst out Boreham.

"Not more serious than I am," said May; "I am serious enough to treat
the subject you have introduced with the fearless criticism you consider
right to apply to all important subjects. You ought to approve!"

And yet she smiled just a little at the corners of her mouth, because
she knew that, when Boreham demanded the right of every man to criticise
fearlessly--what he really had in his mind was the vision of himself,
Boreham, criticising fearlessly. He thought of himself, for instance, as
trying to shame the British public for saying slimily: "Let's pretend
to be monogamous!" He thought of himself calling out pluckily: "Here,
you self-satisfied humbugs, I'm going to say straight out--we ain't
monogamous----"

He never contemplated May Dashwood coming and saying to him: "And are
_you_ not a self-satisfied humbug, pretending that there is no courage,
no endurance, no moral effort superior to your own?" It was this that
made May smile a little.

"The fact remains," he said, feeling his way hotly, blindly, "that a man
can, and does, make a woman happy, if he loves her. All I ask," he went
on, "is to be allowed the chance of doing this, and you gibe."

"I don't gibe," said May, "I'm preaching. And, after all, I ought not to
preach, because marriage does not concern me--directly. I shall not
marry again, Mr. Boreham."

Boreham stared hard at her and his eyebrows worked. All she had just
been saying provoked his anger; it disagreed with him, made him dismal,
and yet, at least, he had no rival! She hadn't got hold of any so-called
saint as a future husband. Middleton hadn't been