and I feel instinctively that you have an unusual career before you. You
interested me the first time you stepped into the pulpit of St. John's
--and it will do me good to talk to you, this once, frankly. You have
reiterated to-day, in no uncertain terms, doctrines which I once
believed, which I was brought up to think infallible. But I have
lived since then, and life itself has made me doubt them.

"I recognize in you a humanity, a sympathy and breadth which you are
yourself probably not aware of, all of which is greater than the rule
which you so confidently apply to fit all cases. It seems to me that
Christ did not intend us to have such rules. He went beyond them, into
the spirit.

"Under the conditions of society--of civilization to-day, most marriages
are merely a matter of chance. Even judgment cannot foresee the
development of character brought about by circumstances, by environment.
And in many marriages I have known about intimately both the man and the
woman have missed the most precious thing that life can give something I
cannot but think--God intends us to have. You see,"--she smiled at him
sadly--"I am still a little of an idealist.

"I missed--the thing I am talking about, and it has been the great sorrow
of my life--not only on my account, but on my husband's. And so far as I
am concerned, I am telling you the truth when I say I should have been
content to have lived in a log cabin if--if the gift had been mine. Not
all the money in the world, nor the intellect, nor the philanthropy--the
so-called interests of life, will satisfy me for its denial. I am a
disappointed woman, I sometimes think a bitter woman. I can't believe
that life is meant to be so. Those energies have gone into ambition
which should have been absorbed by--by something more worth while.