"But there are exceptions in the New Testament?"
The peach bloom on Marcia's cheek deepened as she bent over the daisy chain she was idly making.
"Doubtful ones! The dissolution of marriage may itself be an open question. But, for all churchmen, the remarriage of divorced persons--and trebly, when it is asked for by the person whose sin caused the divorce!--is an absolutely closed one!"
Marcia's mind was in a ferment. But her girlish senses were keenly alive to the presence beside her--the clean-cut classical face, the spiritual beauty of the eyes. Yet something in her shivered.
"Suppose she was very unhappy with her first husband?"
"Law cannot be based on hard cases. It is made to help the great multitude of suffering, sinning men and women through their lives." He paused a little, and then said, "Our Lord 'knew what was in man.'"
The low tone in which the last words were spoken affected Marcia deeply, not so much as an appeal to religion, for her own temperament was not religious, as because they revealed the inner mystical life of the man beside her. She was suddenly filled again with a strange pride that he should have singled her out--to love her.
But the rise of feeling was quickly followed by recoil.
"If I had been very miserable--had made a hideous mistake--and knew it--and somebody came along and offered to make me happy--give me a home--and care for me--I couldn't and I shouldn't resist!"
"You would," he said, simply, "if God gave you strength."
Nothing so intimate had yet been said between them. There was silence. That old, old connection between the passion of religion--which is in truth a great romanticism--and the passion of sex, made itself felt; but in its most poetic form. Marcia was thrillingly conscious of the debate in herself--of the voice which said, "Teach me, govern me, love me--be my adored master and friend!" and the voice which replied, "I should be his slave--I will not!"
"He is going in a month. My father offered all we could. If--Mrs. Betts"--the words came out with effort--"would have separated from him we should have amply provided for her and her child. The Cloan Sisters would have watched over her. She could have lived near them, and Betts could have seen her from time to time--"