“Ah!  Do general rules of conduct take account of the variations of the individual spirit?”

He looked at me hard, as if he began to scent heresy.

“You had better explain yourself more fully,” he said.  “I really don’t follow.”

“Well, let us take a concrete instance.  We know Christ’s saying of the married that they are one flesh!  But we know also that there are wives who continue to live the married life with dreadful feelings of spiritual revolt wives who have found out that, in spite of all their efforts, they have no spiritual affinity with their husbands.  Is that in accordance with the spirit of Christ’s teaching, or is it not?”

“We are told——­” he began.

“I have admitted the definite commandment:  ’They twain shall be one flesh.’  There could not be, seemingly, any more rigid law laid down; how do you reconcile it with the essence of Christ’s teaching?  Frankly, I want to know:  Is there or is there not a spiritual coherence in Christianity, or is it only a gathering of laws and precepts, with no inherent connected spiritual philosophy?”

“Of course,” he said, in his long-suffering voice, “we don’t look at things like that—­for us there is no questioning.”

“But how do you reconcile such marriages as I speak of, with the spirit of Christ’s teaching?  I think you ought to answer me.”

“Oh!  I can, perfectly,” he answered; “the reconciliation is through suffering.  What a poor woman in such a case must suffer makes for the salvation of her spirit.  That is the spiritual fulfilment, and in such a case the justification of the law.”

“So then,” I said, “sacrifice or suffering is the coherent thread of Christian philosophy?”

“Suffering cheerfully borne,” he answered.

“You do not think,” I said, “that there is a touch of extravagance in that?  Would you say, for example, that an unhappy marriage is a more Christian thing than a happy one, where there is no suffering, but only love?”

A line came between his brows.  “Well!” he said at last, “I would say, I think, that a woman who crucifies her flesh with a cheerful spirit in obedience to God’s law, stands higher in the eyes of God than one who undergoes no such sacrifice in her married life.”  And I had the feeling that his stare was passing through me, on its way to an unseen goal.

“You would desire, then, I suppose, suffering as the greatest blessing for yourself?”

“Humbly,” he said, “I would try to.”

“And naturally, for others?”

“God forbid!”

“But surely that is inconsistent.”

He murmured:  “You see, I have suffered.”

We were silent.  At last I said:  “Yes, that makes much which was dark quite clear to me.”

“Oh?” he asked.

I answered slowly:  “Not many men, you know, even in your profession, have really suffered.  That is why they do not feel the difficulty which you feel in desiring suffering for others.”