“Yes, dear one,” he said, drawing her close to his heart, “we must at times go from what we most tenderly love, in order to be drawn closer.  The closest links are those which do not bind at all.  It is a great mistake to keep the marriage tie so binding, and to force upon society such a dearth of social life as we see around us daily.  Give men and women liberty to enjoy themselves on high social planes, and we shall not have the debasing things which are occurring daily, and are constantly on the increase.  If I should take a lady of culture and refinement to a concert, a lecture, or to a theatre, would not society lift up its hands in holy horror, and scandal-mongers go from house to house?  If men and women come not together on high planes, they will meet on debasing ones.  Give us more liberty, and we shall have more purity.  I speak these words not impulsively; they are the result of long thinking, and were they my last, I would as strongly and as fearlessly utter them.”

“I feel myself growing in thought, to-night, Hugh, and O, how proud I feel that the little being who is soon to claim our love, if all is well, will come into at least some knowledge of these things.”

In a few weeks she expected to become a mother, and was looking hopefully forward to the event, as all women do, or should, who have pleasant homes and worthy husbands.

“I, too, am glad that we can give it the benefit of our experience, and shall be proud to welcome into the world a legitimate child.”

“Why, Hugh! what do you mean?  All children are legitimate, are they not, that are born in wedlock?”

“Very far from it.  In very many cases they are wholly illegitimate.”

His wife looked eagerly for an explanation.

“All persons who are not living in harmony and love, are bringing into the world illegitimate offspring.  Children should be born because they are wanted.  A welcome should greet every new-born child, and yet a mere physical relation is all that exists between thousands of parents and children, while thousands who have not given physical birth are more fitted by qualities of heart and soul to be the parents of these spiritual orphans than the blood relations, who claim them as their own.  I often think that many in the other life will find, even though they may have had no offspring in this, that they have children by the ties of soul and heart-affinity, which constitutes after all the only relationship that is immortal.”

Ten days after the above conversation, the eventful period came.  All night she lingered in pain, and at daybreak a bright and beautiful daughter was laid at her side.  But, alas! life here was not for her.  Mother and babe were about to be separated, for the fast receding pulse told plainly to the watchful physician that her days were numbered.  Her anguished husband read it in the hopeless features of the doctor, and leaning over the dear one he loved so well, be caught from her these last words,—­