I made an effort to speak, but my voice would not come.

"I thought ... as there was no other way of escape from this terrible marriage ... but if you think ..."

He stopped, and then coming closer he said:

"I suppose you know what this means for you, Mary--that after all the degradation you have gone through you are shutting the door to a worthier, purer life, and that ..."

I could bear no more. My heart was yearning for him, yet I was compelled to speak.

"But would it be a purer life, Martin, if it began in sin? No, no, it wouldn't, it couldn't. Oh, you can't think how hard it is to deny myself the happiness you offer me. It's harder than all the miseries my husband has inflicted upon me. But it wouldn't be happiness, because our sin would stand between us. That would always be there, Martin--every day, every night, as long as ever we lived... . We should never know one really happy hour. I'm sure we should not. I should be unhappy myself and I should make you unhappy. Oh, I daren't! I daren't! Don't ask me, I beg--I beseech you."

I burst into tears after this, and there was a long silence between us.

Then Martin touched my arm and said with a gentleness that nearly broke my heart:

"Don't cry, Mary. I give in. I find I have no will but yours, dear. If _you_ can bear the present condition of things, I ought to be able to.

Let us go back to the house."

He raised me to my feet and we turned our faces homeward. All the brightness of the day had gone for both of us by this time. The tide was now far out. Its moaning was only a distant murmur. The shore was a stretch of jagged black rocks covered with sea-weed.

SIXTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

Notwithstanding Martin's tenderness I had a vague fear that he had only pretended to submit to my will, and before the day was over I had proof of it.

During dinner we spoke very little, and after it was over we went out to the balcony to sit on a big oak seat which stood there.

It was another soft and soundless night, without stars, very dark, and with an empty echoing air, which seemed to say that thunder was not far off, for the churning of the nightjar vibrated from the glen, and the distant roar of the tide, now rising, was like the rumble of drums at a soldier's funeral.

Just as we sat down the pleasure-steamer we had seen in the morning re-crossed our breadth of sea on its way back to Blackwater; and lit up on deck and in all its port-holes, it looked like a floating _cafe chantant_ full of happy people, for they were singing in chorus a rugged song which Martin and I had known all our lives--

_Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea, Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be_.

When the steamer had passed into darkness, Martin said:

"I don't want to hurt you again, Mary, but before I go there's something I want to know... . If you cannot divorce your husband, and if ...

if you cannot come to me what ... what is left to us?"

I tried to tell him there was only one thing left to us, and (as much for myself as for him) I did my best to picture the spiritual heights and beauties of renunciation.

"Does that mean that we are to ... to part?" he said. "You going your way and I going mine ... never to meet again?"

That cut me to the quick, so I said--it was all I could trust myself to say--that the utmost that was expected of us was that we should govern our affections--control and conquer them.

"Do you mean that we are to stamp them out altogether?" he said.

That cut me to the quick too, and I felt like a torn bird that is struggling in the lime, but I contrived to say that if our love was guilty love it was our duty to destroy it.

"Is that possible?" he said.

"We must ask God to help us," I answered, and then, while his head was down and I was looking out into the darkness, I tried to say that though he was suffering now he would soon get over this disappointment.

"Do you _wish_ me to get over it?" he asked.

This confused me terribly, for in spite of all I was saying I knew at the bottom of my heart that in the sense he intended I did not and could not wish it.

"We have known and cared for each other all our lives, Mary--isn't that so? It seems as if there never was a time when we didn't know and care for each other. Are we to pray to God, as you say, that a time may come when we shall feel as if we had never known and cared for each other at all?"

My throat was fluttering--I could not answer him.

"_I_ can't," he said. "I never shall--never as long as I live. No prayers will ever help me to forget you."

I could not speak. I dared not look at him. After a moment he said in a thicker voice:

"And you ... will you be able to forget _me_? By praying to God will you be able to wipe me out of your mind?"

I felt as if something were strangling me.

"A woman lives in her heart, doesn't she?" he said. "Love is everything to her ... everything except her religion. Will it be possible--this renunciation ... will it be possible for you either?"

I felt as if all the blood in my body were running away from me.

"It will not. You know it will not. You will never be able to renounce your love. Neither of us will he able to renounce it. It isn't possible.

It isn't human... . Well, what then? If we continue to love each other--you here and I down there--we shall be just as guilty in the eyes of the Church, shan't we?"

I did not answer him, and after a moment he came closer to me on the seat and said almost in a whisper:

"Then think again, Mary. Only give one glance to the horrible life that is before you when I am gone. You have been married a year ... only a year ... and you have suffered terribly. But there is worse to come.

Your husband's coarse infidelity has been shocking, but there will be something more shocking than his infidelity--his affection. Have you never thought of _that_?"

I started and shuddered, feeling as if somebody must have told him the most intimate secret of my life. Coming still closer he said:

"Forgive me, dear. I'm bound to speak plainly now. If I didn't I should never forgive myself in the future ... Listen! Your husband will get over his fancy for this ... this woman. He'll throw her off, as he has thrown off women of the same kind before. What will happen then? He'll remember that you belong to him ... that he has rights in you ...

that you are his wife and he is your husband ... that the infernal law which denies you the position of an equal human being gives him a right--a legal right--to compel your obedience. Have you never thought of _that_?"

For one moment we looked into each other's eyes; then he took hold of my hand and, speaking very rapidly, said:

"That's the life that is before you when I am gone--to live with this man whom you loathe ... year after year, as long as life lasts ...

occupying the same house, the same room, the same ..."

I uttered an involuntary cry and he stopped.

"Martin," I said, "there is something you don't know."

And then, I told him--it was forced out of me--my modesty went down in the fierce battle with a higher pain, and I do not know whether it was my pride or my shame or my love that compelled me to tell him, but I _did_ tell him--God knows how--that I could not run the risk he referred to because I was not in that sense my husband's wife and never had been.