_"For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and be
joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh."_

She started, as if only now she began to comprehend the full force of
that awful union--"one flesh" and "till death us do part."

Mrs. Ferguson tried the door, and knocked.

"Dr. Grey is waiting, my dear. You must not keep your husband waiting."

"My husband!" and again, came the wild look, as of a free
creature suddenly caught, tied, and bound. "What have I done? oh
what have I done? Is it _too_ late?"

Ay, it was too late.

Many a woman has married with far less excuse that Christian did--
married for money or position, or in a cowardly yielding to family
persuasion, some one who she knew did not love her, or whom she did
not love, with the only sort of love which makes marriage sacred.
What agonies such women must have endured, if they had any spark of
feminine feeling left alive, they themselves know; and what Christian,
far more guiltless than they, also endured during the three minutes that
she kept Mrs. Ferguson waiting at the locked door, was a thing never to
be spoken of, but also never to be forgotten during the longest and
happiest lifetime. It was a warning that made her--even her--to the end
of her days, say to every young woman she knew, "Beware! Marry _for
love_, or never marry at all."