A woman attended the lectures of Rabbi Meir and came home late. Her husband, furious, demanded to know where she had been. When she told him she had been listening to Torah, he gave her an ultimatum: she would not return to his house unless she first spat in the face of Rabbi Meir himself.
She refused. She left her home rather than shame the teacher who had shown her Torah. The community pleaded with her husband; he would not relent. Word reached Rabbi Meir. He sent for the woman, and when she arrived he greeted her as if nothing were wrong. Then he added, as a small aside, "My eye has been sore for days. I have been told that a woman's spittle, offered seven times, is a folk remedy. Would you spit in my eye seven times to cure me?"
She understood. She spat seven times. Meir sent her home, and when her husband heard that she had not only spat once but seven times in the great teacher's face, his rage turned to surprise, then to shame, then to reconciliation. The marriage was saved.
Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924, No. 145) records this story as a lesson in the priorities of a talmid chacham. When asked later why he had allowed such a humiliation, Rabbi Meir replied that shalom bayit — peace between husband and wife — was worth more than any honor he could hold for himself. The teacher who was willing to be spat on seven times built more Torah that night than he had in many lectures.