d? I have been
mistaken, have suffered, have atoned for my error. Is that enough?"

"But," she said, and her voice seemed to have suddenly grown old and
thin, "you have no right to talk of mistakes. She is your wife."

"The biretta, that ends all, again! No, not so. It is as insane and
inhuman to force two people to remain in wedlock after it has become
odious to them, as it would be to force them into that marriage at
first. Oh, my tender-hearted little one, can you not see that the
bondage is more humiliating, more craven than is the idea of the
veriest chattel mortgage? Yet you refuse to let the injured one go
free, as you would not refuse the poorest prodigal whose one chance for
home and happiness was passing from his sight."

"I cannot answer you when you discuss learnedly on such questions," she
said, with a weary dignity, "for I have never thought about them. Why
should I? It has always seemed to me that a man with more than one
wife was a--a--Mormon. It is all so dreadful. Surely, if a marriage
is anything, it is a vow before God."

"It is you that make the mistake now," he said, "for the mere form of
marriage is nothing but the outward evidence of a union that has
already taken place. The first is the vow before God--not the latter.
I understand why you think all this; clergymen have so long been called
upon to officiate at marriage rites that, with the fatherly assumption
notable in the order all the world over, they have grown to regard
themselves as the especial and heaven-appointed guardians of the
institution. It is all so grotesque when one remembers how ready they
are to 'solemnize'--save the mark!--marriage, no matter what the
conditions. Have the candidates to be known as right and fitting
persons? Is there even the simplest formula of preparatory
examination? None! Two wholly unsuited people may rush into
marriage--and misery--any day by simply presenting themselves before a
sleek-faced person who mumbles drowsily over their clasped hands, and
calls it a vow before God!--as he hurries back to his dinner!"

Still she was silent.

An errand boy trudging by whistled a few bars of the wedding march,
doubtless heard that day at some open church door.

"Dear, there is a higher, holier law of the great Power, who made us
what we are, than this one of slavish obedience to a tradition. Why
must our feet go in the burning ruts?"

"It is not the well-worn ruts that burn, but the by-pa