She paused, breathing deeply, and Hodder gazed at her with pity.  What he felt was more than pity; he was experiencing, indeed, but with a deeper emotion, something of that same confusion of values into which Eleanor Goodrich’s visit had thrown him.  At the same time it had not escaped his logical mind that Mrs. Constable had made her final plea on the score of respectability.

“It gives me great pain to have to refuse you,” he said gently.

“Oh, don’t,” she said sharply, “don’t say that!  I can’t have made the case clear.  You are too big, too comprehending, Mr. Hodder, to have a hard-and-fast rule.  There must be times—­extenuating circumstances—­and I believe the canons make it optional for a clergyman to marry the innocent person.”

“Yes, it is optional, but I do, not believe it should be.  The question is left to the clergyman’s’ conscience.  According to my view, Mrs. Constable, the Church, as the agent of God, effects an indissoluble bond.  And much as I should like to do anything in my power for you and Mr. Constable, you have asked the impossible,—­believing as I do, there can be no special case, no extenuating circumstance.  And it is my duty to tell you it is because people to-day are losing their beliefs that we have this lenient attitude toward the sacred things.  If they still held the conviction that marriage is of God, they would labour to make it a success, instead of flying apart at the first sign of what they choose to call incompatibility.”

“But surely,” she said, “we ought not to be punished for our mistakes!  I cannot believe that Christ himself intended that his religion should be so inelastic, so hard and fast, so cruel as you imply.  Surely there is enough unhappiness without making more.  You speak of incompatibility —­but is it in all cases such an insignificant matter?  We are beginning to realize in these days something of the effects of character on character,—­deteriorating effects, in many instances.  With certain persons we are lifted up, inspired to face the battle of life and overcome its difficulties.  I have known fine men and women whose lives have been stultified or ruined because they were badly mated.  And I cannot see that the character of my own daughter has deteriorated because she has got a divorce from a man with whom she was profoundly out of sympathy—­of harmony.  On the contrary, she seems more of a person than she was; she has clearer, saner views of life; she has made her mistake and profited by it.  Her views changed—­Victor Warren’s did not.  She began to realize that some other woman might have an influence over his life—­she had none, simply because he did not love her.  And love is not a thing we can compel.”

“You are making it very hard for me, Mrs. Constable,” he said.  “You are now advocating an individualism with which the Church can have no sympathy.  Christianity teaches us that life is probationary, and if we seek to avoid the trials sent us, instead of overcoming them, we find ourselves farther than ever from any solution.  We have to stand by our mistakes.  If marriage is to be a mere trial of compatibility, why go through a ceremony than which there is none more binding in human and divine institutions?  One either believes in it, or one does not.  And, if belief be lacking, the state provides for the legalization of marriages.”