Rachael raised sombre eyes, her breast rose on a long sigh.

“I am not a child,” she said slowly.

“Aren’t we all children?” asked the bishop, mildly triumphant.

Rachael, sitting there in Florence’s garden, looking down at the white roofs of the village and the smooth sheet of blue that was Belvedere Bay, felt a burning resentment enter her heart.  How calm and smug and sure of themselves they were, these bishops and Florences and old lady Gregorys!  How easy for them to advise and admonish, to bottle her up with their little laws and platitudes, these good people married to other good people, and wrapped in the warmth of mutual approval and admiration!  The bishop was talking—­

“Children, yes, the best and wisest of us is no more than that,” he was saying dreamily, “and we must bear and forbear with each other.  Not easy?  Of course it’s not easy!  But no cross no crown, you know.  I have known Clarence a great many years—­”

“I am sorry to hurt Florence—­God knows I’m sorry for the whole thing!” Rachael said, “but you must admit that I am the best judge of this matter.  I’ve borne it long enough.  My mind is made up.  You and I have always been good friends, Bishop Thomas”—­she laid a beautiful hand impulsively on his arm—­“and you know that what you say has weight with me.  But believe me, I’m not jumping hastily into this:  it’s come after long, serious thought.  Clarence wants to be free as well—­”

“Clarence does?” the clergyman asked, with a disapproving shake of his head.

“He has said so,” Rachael answered briefly.

“And what will your life be after this, my child?”

To this she responded merely with a shrug.  Perhaps the bishop suspected that such a calm confidence in the future indicated more or less definite plans, for he gave her a shrewd and searching look, but there was nothing to be said.  The lovely lady continued to stare at the soft turf with unsmiling eyes, and the clergyman could only watch her in puzzled silence.

“After all,” Rachael said presently, giving him a rueful glance, “what are the statistics?  One marriage in twelve fails—­fails openly, I mean—­for of course there are hundreds that don’t get that far.  Sixty thousand last year!”

“If those are the statistics,” said the bishop warmly, “it is a disgrace to a Christian country!”

“But you don’t call this a Christian country?” Rachael said perversely.

“It is supposedly so,” the clergyman asserted.

“Supposedly Christian,” she mused, “and yet one marriage out of every twelve ends in divorce, and you Christians—­well, you don’t cut us!  We may not keep holy the Sabbath day, we may not honor our fathers and mothers, we may envy our neighbor’s goods, yes, and his wife, if we like, but still—­you don’t refuse to come to our houses!”

“I don’t know you in this mood,” said Bishop Thomas coldly.