At rare intervals she attended the ladies’ meetings, but no persuasions could induce her to take any part in them.  She visited those whom she fancied, and persistently refused to visit others; thus he laboured under constant embarrassment, and was in a chronic state of apology for her.  And yet Mrs. Eldred could make herself the most fascinating of beings.  There were evenings when she chose to shine at home.  Then she would with artistic skill brighten the room, and beguile her husband from his books, and the time would go on wings, as they read and discussed a new book, and sung together their old and new songs.  At such times the careworn minister forgot that any clouds obscured his sky.

One evening Mrs. Eldred entered her husband’s study, resplendent in white satin and diamonds, saying:—­

“Thane, it is quite time you too were dressed.”

“Dressed for what?” he said with an astonished air.

“Why, is it possible that you have forgotten that we have an invitation to Mrs. Grantley’s tonight?”

“I recall the invitation now, but I never gave it a second thought, nor did I suppose that you had.  Did you not notice from the wording that it was to be a dancing party.  I think there must be some mistake about it, as I never was invited before our marriage to these parties, nor have we been since; I cannot understand why they should ask us now.”

“Why, pray, should we not be invited?  It is not necessary for you to dance, of course.  We shall be obliged to go, for I have accepted the invitation,” Mrs. Eldred replied, with a nothing-further-to-be-said air.

“I am sorry you accepted an invitation for me, without consulting me, but I cannot go,” her husband answered gravely.

“Oh fie!  How old and strait-laced you are for a young man; why Dr. Henry often went and looked on, and his daughter danced, and people liked him all the better for it.  You will be immensely unpopular if you pursue that course.  Don’t you think,” she continued, encouraged by his silence, “that it savours a little of bigotry and egotism to set one’s self up to condemn an amusement that many other Christians approve?  What is your ground of objection?  One would suppose that you had received a direct revelation on the subject.”

“I have,” he said, and his clear eyes looked full into hers, “directly from the Master himself.  Don’t you know that a person who is absorbed in Christian work, a consecrated Christian, is not absorbed in all these amusements, and one who is, has no room in his heart for Christ.  There is a law of Natural Philosophy, you know, which says that ’Two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time’, and there is a somewhat similar law in regard to a soul, stated by the Lord himself.  ‘Ye cannot serve two masters.’  It is the world or Christ with every soul, and I have chosen Christ.”

“I know this much,” she said, coldly, “that fanatics are the most intolerable of all people.  I have danced all my life, and since I became a church-member, and never had it hinted to me before that I was not a Christian because I loved it.  You need not go; John can take me and call for me, and I will make excuses for you.”