"I thought you wanted me to have faith! How can I have faith when I hear of priests degrading our love. What right had you to go to a priest? What does he know of you or me? What has he suffered? What does he understand? Why do you listen to him and pay no heed to me? What did you say?"
Pauline looked at him in silence.
"What did you say?" he repeated angrily. He was caring for nothing at that moment but to tear from her the history of the scene that made a furnace of his brain. "He must have tried to put the idea into your head that you've been doing wrong. I say you have done nothing wrong. I suppose you told him you came out at night with me on the river and I suppose he concluded from that ... oh, Pauline, I cannot let you be a prey to the mind of a priest. You don't realize what it means to me. You don't realize the raging jealousy it rouses."
"Guy," she moaned, "love is too much for me. I can't bear the uncertainty. Your debts ... the sending back of your poems ... the fear that we shall never be married ... the doubts ... the thought that I've deceived my family ... the misery I bring to you because I can't think everything is right...."
"I don't want you always to agree with me. I've promised never to ask you again to come out with me at night. I'll even promise never to kiss you again, until we are married. But you must promise me never again to go to Confession."
"I can't give up what I believe is right," she said.
"Then I won't give up what I believe is right."
He strained her to him and kissed her lips so closely that they were white instead of red. Then he went from her in an impulse to let her if she would break off the engagement. If he had stayed he must have blasphemed the religion which was soiling with its murk their love. He must have hurt her so deeply that he would have compelled her to bid him never come back. It was for her now, the responsibility of going on, and she should find what religion would do for her when she was left alone to battle with the infamous suggestions the fiction was giving to her mind. She should find that beside his love religion was nothing, that the folly would topple down and betray her at this very moment. When next he saw her, she would have forgotten her priests and their mummery: she would think only of him and live only for him.
"Blow, you damned wind," he shouted to the brilliant and tranquil March day. "Blow, blow, can't you? You've blown all these days and now when I want you in my face, you lie still."
But the weather stayed serene, and Guy had to run in order to tire the fury in his mind. He did not stop until he realized by the scampering of the March hares to right and left of his path how very absurd he must appear even to the blind heavens.