“You are right; yet how closely we have lived together, Arline, since we were married.”

“Because we both had large experiences and had mingled in many spheres, previous to our union.”

“Right again; ever right,” and he gazed on her with tenderest emotion, while she wondered if the time would ever come when she should not hold him as she then did.  The thought made her tremble, so deeply did she love this man who supplied her nature so richly every day with that element of manliness which all women need, but so few receive.

“I will invite Howard here to spend an evening,” said her husband, little knowing how tenderly the heart of his wife was going out to him, at that moment.

The next evening Mr. Deane came with Hugh to tea.  Mrs. Wyman was surprised to see how pale and care-worn he appeared, and longed to reach his mind, that she might give him that life which he so much needed.

Mrs. Deane, after the recovery of their child, finding her husband’s tenderness revived towards her, settled into her own ways of thinking and living more completely than ever.  For a time she with her husband lived in a state of undivided love.  When that passed away, she was the same exacting woman as before, allowing him no life but what he gathered from her; no thoughts but her own to live upon.  In such an atmosphere he drooped, and would have died, but for the timely aid of Mr. Wyman and his wife; those truth-loving souls who cared not for the popular sentiment when principles were to be maintained, and who stood up courageously for the truth, regardless of those who turned sneeringly aside from them, or ridiculed and misrepresented their views.

Mrs. Deane’s course amply illustrated one of the evils of our present marriage system, the removal of which will cause confusion and perhaps some wrong doing.  But we have confusion and wrongs at present, and all history testifies to the truth that revolutions in political, religious and social institutions, though seemingly disastrous for the time, have been followed by better conditions for humanity, and advanced mankind to higher states.  In a relation so intimate, so holy, as the union of two souls, human law has but little to do.  When it enters as an external agent, with its rites in conformity with custom, this human law is liable to err, but the divine law which governs internal relations can never err.  Hence, marriage should be subject only to this divine or higher law.  The questions which grow out of this statement are many, none of which are probably greater, or about which the public pulse is more sensitive than those relating to property.  But they, too, may have had their day, and higher conditions as regards material wealth, be ready to descend upon us.  Of woman’s right to be paid according to her labor-of her right to the college and the various professions, her eternal right to follow her inspiration, and become just what she feels she is fitted for, and thus fulfil her destiny,