“’I can’t honestly regret leaving him, and I’m not conscious of having done anything wrong.  I don’t want to shock you, and I know how terribly you and father must feel, but I can see now, somehow, that I had to go through this experience, terrible as it was, to find myself.  If it were thirty years ago, before people began to be liberal in such matters, I shudder to think what might have become of me.  I should now be one of those terrible women between fifty and sixty who have tried one frivolity and excess after another—­but I’m not coming to that!  And my friends have really been awfully kind, and supported me—­even Victor’s family.  Don’t, don’t think that I’m not respectable!  I know how you look at such things.’” Mrs. Constable closed the letter abruptly.

“I did look at such things in that way,” she added, “but I’ve changed.  That letter helped to change me, and the fact that it was Gertrude who had been through this.  If you only knew Gertrude, Mr. Hodder, you couldn’t possibly think of her as anything but sweet and pure.”

Although the extent of Hodder’s acquaintance with Mrs. Warren had been but five minutes, the letter had surprisingly retouched to something like brilliancy her faded portrait, the glow in her cheeks, the iris blue in her eyes.  He recalled the little shock he had experienced when told that she was divorced, for her appeal had lain in her very freshness, her frank and confiding manner.  She was one of those women who seem to say, “Here I am, you can’t but like me:”  And he had responded—­he remembered that—­he had liked her.  And now her letter, despite his resistance, had made its appeal, so genuinely human was it, so honest, although it expressed a philosophy he abhorred.

Mrs. Constable was watching him mutely, striving to read in his grave eyes the effect of her pleadings.

“You are telling me this, Mrs. Constable—­why?” he asked.

“Because I wished you to know the exact situation before I asked you, as a great favour to me, to Mr. Constable, to—­to marry her in St. John’s.  Of course,” she went on, controlling her rising agitation, and anticipating a sign of protest, “we shouldn’t expect to have any people, —–­and Gertrude wasn’t married in St. John’s before; that wedding was at Passumset our seashore place.  Oh, Mr. Hodder, before you answer, think of our feelings, Mr. Constable’s and mine!  If you could see Mr. Constable, you would know how he suffers—­this thing has upset him more than the divorce.  His family have such pride.  I am so worried about him, and he doesn’t eat anything and looks so haggard.  I told him I would see you and explain and that seemed to comfort him a little.  She is, after all, our child, and we don’t want to feel, so far as our church is concerned, that she is an Ishmaelite; we don’t want to have the spectacle of her having to go around, outside, to find a clergyman—­that would be too dreadful!  I know how strict, how unflinching you are, and I admire you for it.  But this is a special case.”