The light was behind me, and my face was in the darkness; but still I covered it with my hands while I stammered out the story of my marriage day and the day after, and of the compact I had entered into with my husband that only when and if I came to love him should he claim my submission as a wife.

While I was speaking I knew that Martin's eyes were fixed on me, for I could feel his breath on the back of my hands, but before I had finished he leapt up and cried excitedly:

"And that compact has been kept?"

"Yes."

"Then it's all right! Don't be afraid. You shall be free. Come in and let me tell you how! Come in, come in!"

He took me back into the boudoir. I had no power to resist him. His face was as pale as death, but his eyes were shining. He made me sit down and then sat on the table in front of me.

"Listen!" he said. "When I bought my ship from the Lieutenant we signed a deed, a contract, as a witness before all men that he would give me his ship and I would give him some money. But if after all he hadn't given me his ship what would our deed have been? Only so much waste paper."

It was the same with my marriage. If it had been an honest contract, the marriage service would have been a witness before God that we meant to live together as man and wife. But I never had, therefore what was the marriage service? Only an empty ceremony!

"That's the plain sense of the matter, isn't it?" he cried. "I defy any priest in the world to prove the contrary."

"Well?"

"Well, don't you see what it comes to? You are free--morally free at all events. You can come to me. You must, too. I daren't leave you in this house any longer. I shall take you to London and fix you up there, and then, when I tome back from the Antarctic ..."

He was glowing with joy, but a cold hand suddenly seized me, for I had remembered all the terrors of excommunication as Father Dan had described them.

"But Martin," I said, "would the Church accept that?"

"What matter whether it would or wouldn't? Our consciences would be clear. There would be no sin, and what you were saying this morning would not apply."

"But if I left my husband I couldn't marry you, could I?"

"Perhaps not."

"Then the Church would say that I was a sinful woman living a sinful life, wouldn't it?"

"But you wouldn't be."

"All the same the Church would say so, and if it did I should be cut out of communion, and if I were cut out of communion I should be cast out of the Church, and if I were cast out of the Church ... what would become of me then?"

"But, my dear, dear girl," said Martin, "don't you see that this is not the same thing at all? It is only a case of a ceremony. And why should a mere ceremony--even if we cannot do away with it--darken a woman's life for ever?"

My heart was yearning for love, but my soul was crying out for salvation; and not being able to answer him for myself, I told him what Father Dan had said I was to say.

"Father Dan is a saint and I love him," he said. "But what can he know--what can any priest know of a situation like this? The law of man has tied you to this brute, but the law of God has given you to me. Why should a marriage service stand between us?"

"But it does," I said. "And we can't alter it. No, no, I dare not break the law of the Church. I am a weak, wretched girl, but I cannot give up my religion."

After that Martin did not speak for a moment. Then he said:

"You mean that, Mary?"

"Yes."

And then my heart accused me so terribly of the crime of resisting him that I took his hand and held his fingers in a tight lock while I told him--what I had never meant to tell--how long and how deeply I had loved him, but nevertheless I dared not face the thought of living and dying without the consolations of the Church.

"I dare not! I dare not!" I said. "I should be a broken-hearted woman if I did, and you don't want that, do you?"

He listened in silence, though the irregular lines in his face showed the disordered state of his soul, and when I had finished a wild look came into his eyes and he said:

"I am disappointed in you, Mary. I thought you were brave and fearless, and that when I showed you a way out of your miserable entanglement you would take it in spite of everything."

His voice was growing thick again. I could scarcely bear to listen to it.

"Do you suppose I wanted to take up the position I proposed to you? Not I. No decent man ever does. But I love you so dearly that I was willing to make that sacrifice and count it as nothing if only I could rescue you from the misery of your abominable marriage."

Then he broke into a kind of fierce laughter, and said:

"It seems I wasn't wanted, though. You say in effect that my love is sinful and criminal, and that it will imperil your soul. So I'm only making mischief here and the sooner I get away the better for everybody."

He threw off my hand, stepped to the door to the balcony, and looking out into the darkness said, between choking laughter and sobs:

"Ellan, you are no place for me. I can't bear the sight of you any longer. I used to think you were the dearest spot on earth, because you were the home of her who would follow me to the ends of the earth if I wanted her, but I was wrong. She loves me less than a wretched ceremony, and would sacrifice my happiness to a miserable bit of parchment."

My heart was clamouring loud. Never had I loved him so much as now. I had to struggle with myself not to throw myself into his arms.

"No matter!" he said. "I should be a poor-spirited fool to stay where I'm not wanted. I must get back to my work. The sooner the better, too.

I thought I should be counting the days down there until I could come home again. But why should I? And why should I care what happens to me?

It's all as one now."

He stepped back from the balcony with a resolute expression on his gloomy face, and I thought for a moment (half hoping and half fearing it) that he was going to lay hold of me and tell me I must do what he wished because I belonged to him.

But he only looked at me for a moment in silence, and then burst into a flood of tears, and turned and ran out of the house.

Let who will say his tears were unmanly. To me they were the bitter cry of a great heart, and I wanted to follow him and say, "Take me. Do what you like with me. I am yours."

I did not do so. I sat a long time where he had left me and then I went into my room and locked the door.

I did not cry. Unjust and cruel as his reproaches had been, I began to have a strange wild joy in them. I knew that he would not have insulted me like that if he had not loved me to the very verge of madness itself.

Hours passed. Price came tapping at my door to ask if she should lock up the house--meaning the balcony. I answered "No, go to bed."

I heard the deadened thud of Martin's footsteps on the lawn passing to and fro. Sometimes they paused under my window and then I had a feeling, amounting to certainty, that he was listening to hear if I was sobbing, and that if I had been he would have broken down my bedroom door to get to me.

At length I heard him come up the stone stairway, shut and bolt the balcony door, and walk heavily across the corridor to his own room.

The day was then dawning. It was four o'clock.

SIXTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER