The thought of another vicarious sacrifice awed him.  Must this be one, too?

“Mistakes, dear, are not crimes.  Can you not understand?  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-paths,” she answered, “and oh! how they burn!”

“Let me lift you in my arms and carry you over them, then, that your feet may not touch.  Do not be unjust to yourself.  Cannot you see how right, how good it is?  It is not as if I came to you from another woman——­”