They rebel
against the yoke because it is a yoke. And yet they accept the yoke,
knowing it to be a yoke. It comes of the devil. You think a priest
can put everything right."

"No, I don't," said Phineas.

"Nothing can put you right but the fear of God; and when a woman is
too proud to ask for that, evils like these are sure to come. She
would not go to church on Sunday afternoon, but had meetings of
Belial at her father's house instead." Phineas well remembered those
meetings of Belial, in which he with others had been wont to discuss
the political prospects of the day. "When she persisted in breaking
the Lord's commandment, and defiling the Lord's day, I knew well what
would come of it."

"I am not sure, Mr. Kennedy, that a husband is justified in demanding
that a wife shall think just as he thinks on matters of religion. If
he is particular about it, he should find all that out before."

"Particular! God's word is to be obeyed, I suppose?"

"But people doubt about God's word."

"Then people will be damned," said Mr. Kennedy, rising from his
chair. "And they will be damned."

"A woman doesn't like to be told so."

"I never told her so. I never said anything of the kind. I never
spoke a hard word to her in my life. If her head did but ache, I hung
over her with the tenderest solicitude. I refused her nothing. When
I found that she was impatient I chose the shortest sermon for our
Sunday evening's worship, to the great discomfort of my mother."
Phineas wondered whether this assertion as to the discomfort of old
Mrs. Kennedy could possibly be true. Could it be that any human being
really preferred a long sermon to a short one,--except the being who
preached it or read it aloud? "There was nothing that I did not do
for her. I suppose you really do know why she went away, Mr. Finn?"

"I know nothing more than I have said."

"I did think once that she was--"

"There was nothing more than I have said," asserted Phineas sternly,
fearing that the poor insane man was about to make some suggestion
that would be terribly painful. "She felt that she did not make you
happy."

"I did not want her to make me happy. I do not expect to be made
happy. I wanted her to do her duty. You were in love with her once,
Mr. Finn?"

"Yes, I was. I was in love with Lady Laura Standish."

"Ah! Yes. There was no harm in that, of course; only when any thing
of that kind happens, people had better keep out of each other's way
afterw