“But, in order to free my own mind from the poison of your suggestions and the shame of the fact that they were made to me, I must answer, in the abstract, one statement in your letter.  Please understand that I answer it completely in the abstract.  You have dared to apply it to my husband and to me.  I do not admit that it applies.  But, even if it did, I should not let it pass unchallenged.  I break a lance with you, Aubrey Treherne, and with all men of your way of thinking, on behalf of every true wife and mother in Christendom!

“You say, that if a man has disappointed his wife, she has a right to leave him; the fact of that disappointment sets her free?

“I say to you, in answer:  when a woman loves a man enough to wed him, he becomes to her as her life—­her very self.

“I often fail, and fall, and disappoint myself.  I do not thereupon immediately feel free to commit suicide.  I face my failure, resolve to do better, and take up my life again, as bravely as may be, on higher lines.

“If a woman leaves her husband she commits moral suicide.  By virtue of his union with her, he is as her own self.  If disappointment and disillusion come to her through him, she must face them as she does when they come through herself.  She must be patient, faithful, understanding, tender; helping him, as she would help herself, to start afresh on higher ground; once more, with a holy courage, facing life bravely.

“This is my answer—­every true woman’s answer—­to the subtle suggestions of your letter.

“I admit that often marriages turn out hopeless—­impossible; mere prisons of degradation.  But that is when the sacred tie is entered into for other than the essential reasons of a perfect love and mutual need; or without due consideration, ‘unadvisedly, lightly, wantonly,’ notwithstanding the Church’s warning.  Or when people have found out their mistake in time, yet lacked the required courage to break their engagement, as I broke off mine with you, Aubrey; thus saving you and myself a lifetime of regret and misery.

“Oh, cannot you see that the only real ‘outer darkness’ is the doing of wrong?  Disappointment, loss, loneliness, remorse—­all these may be hard to bear, but they can be borne in the light; they do not necessarily belong to the outer darkness.

“May I ask you, as some compensation for the pain your letter has given me, and the terrible effort this answer has cost, to bear with me if, in closing, I quote to you in full the final words of the first chapter of the first epistle of St. John?  I do so with my heart full of hope and prayer for you—­yes, even for you, Aubrey.  Because, though my words will probably fail to influence you, God has promised that His Word shall never return unto Him void.

“’If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin....  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’