I could not allow him to go any further, so I blurted out somehow that I had seen my father already.

"On this subject?"

"Yes."

"And what did he say?"

I told him as well as I could what my father had said, being ashamed to repeat it.

"That was only bluff, though," said Martin. "The real truth is that you would cease to be Lady Raa and that would be a blow to his pride. Then there would no longer be any possibility of establishing a family and that would disturb his plans. No matter! We can set Curphy to work ourselves."

"But I have seen Mr. Curphy also," I said.

"And what did _he_ say?"

I told him what the lawyer had said and he was aghast.

"Good heavens! What an iniquity! In England too! But never mind! There are other countries where this relic of the barbaric ages doesn't exist.

We'll go there. We must get you a divorce somehow."

My time had come. I could keep back the truth no longer.

"But Martin," I said, "divorce is impossible for me--quite impossible."

And then I told him that I had been to see the Bishop also, and he had said what I had known before, though in the pain of my temptation I had forgotten it, that the Catholic Church did not countenance divorce under any circumstances, because God made marriages and therefore no man could dissolve them.

Martin listened intently, and in his eagerness to catch every word he raised himself to a kneeling position by my side, so that he was looking into my face.

"But Mary, my dear Mary," he said, "you don't mean to say you will allow such considerations to influence you?"

"I am a Catholic--what else can I do?" I said.

"But think--my dear, dear girl, think how unreasonable, how untrue, how preposterous it all is in a case like yours? God made your marriage?

Yours? God married you to that notorious profligate? Can you believe it?"

His eyes were flaming. I dared not look at them.

"Then think again. They say there's no divorce in the Catholic Church, do they? But what are they talking about? Morally speaking you are a divorced woman already. Anybody with an ounce of brains can see that.

When you were married to this man he made a contract with you, and he has broken the terms of it, hasn't he? Then where's the contract now? It doesn't any longer exist. Your husband has destroyed it."

"But isn't marriage different?" I asked.

And then I tried to tell him what the Bishop had said of the contract of marriage being unlike any other contract because God Himself had become a party to it.

"What?" he cried. "God become a party to a marriage like yours? My dear girl, only think! Think of what your marriage has been--the pride and vanity and self-seeking that conceived it, the compulsion that was put upon you to carry it through, and then the shame and the suffering and the wickedness and the sin of it! Was God a party to the making of a marriage like that?"

In his agitation he rose, walked two or three paces in front and came back to me.

"Then think what it means if your marriage may not be dissolved. It means that you must go on living with this man whose life is so degrading. Year in, year out, as long as your life lasts you must let him humiliate and corrupt you with his company, his companions and his example, until you are dragged down, down, down to the filth he lives in himself, and your very soul is contaminated. Is that what the Church asks of you?"

I answered no, and tried to tell him what the Bishop had told me about separation, but he interrupted me with a shout.

"Separation? Did he say that? If the Church has no right to divorce you what right has it to separate you? Oh, I see what it will say--hope of reconciliation. But if you were separated from your husband would you ever go back to him? Never in this world. Then what would your separation be? Only divorce under another name."

I was utterly shaken. Perhaps I wanted to believe what Martin was saying; perhaps I did not know enough to answer him, but I could not help it if I thought Martin's clear mind was making dust and ashes of everything that Father Dan and the Bishop had said to me.

"Then what can I do?" I asked.

I thought his face quivered at that question. He got up again, and stood before me for a moment without speaking. Then he said, with an obvious effort--

"If your Church will not allow you to divorce your husband, and if you and I cannot marry without that, then ..."

"Yes?"

"I didn't mean to propose it ... God knows I didn't, but when a woman ... when a woman has been forced into a loveless marriage, and it is crushing the very soul out of her, and the iron law of her Church will not permit her to escape from it, what crime does she commit if she ..."

"Well?" I asked, though I saw what he was going to say.

"Mary," he said, breathing, hard and fast, "you must come to me."

I made a sudden cry, though I tried not to.

"Oh, I know," he said. "It's not what we could wish. But we'll be open about it. We'll face it out. Why shouldn't we? I shall anyway. And if your father and the Bishop say anything to me I'll tell them what I think of the abominable marriage they forced you into. As for you, dear, I know you'll have to bear something. All the conventional canting hypocrisies! Every man who has bought his wife, and every woman who has sold herself into concubinage--there are thousands and thousands of them all the world over, and they'll try ... perhaps they'll try ... but let them try. If they want to trample the life out of you they'll have to walk over me first--yes, by God they will!"

"But Martin ..."

"Well?"

"Do you mean that I ... I am ... to ... to live with you without marriage?"

"It's the only thing possible, isn't it?" he said. And then he tried to show me that love was everything, and if people loved each other nothing else mattered--religious ceremonies were nothing, the morality of society was nothing, the world and its back-biting was nothing.

The great moment had come for me at last, and though I felt torn between love and pity I had to face it.

"Martin, I ... I can't do it," I said.

He looked steadfastly into my face for a moment, but I dare not look back, for I knew he was suffering.

"You think it would be wrong?"

"Yes."

"A sin?"

I tried to say "Yes" again, but my reply died in my throat.

There was another moment of silence and then, in a faltering voice that nearly broke me down, he said:

"In that case there is nothing more to say... . There isn't, is there?"