"What d'ye mean, No?"
"I want to go away. I want to be released from my vows."
The formula had become almost mechanical now. The Jesuit for the first time dropped the brusqueness of manner habitual to him.
Pacing the length of the big parlour with measured, even strides, his hands clasped behind his shabby cassock, he let his deep, naturally rhetorical voice boom out in full, rolling periods through the room.
"Why did ye come to me at all, Sister? It wasn't for advice, and it wasn't for help. I've offered both, and ye'll take neither. Having put your hand to the plough, you've looked back. Ye say that sooner than remain faithful ye'll run away—ye'll make a scandal and a disgrace for the Community that's sheltered ye, and bring shame and sorrow to the good Mothers here. What did ye expect me to answer to that? If your whole will is turned to evil, it was a farce and a mockery to come to me—I can do nothing.
"But one thing I'll tell ye, Sister. If ye do this thing—if it goes up to Rome, and the vows ye took in full consciousness and free will on the day ye were professed, are dissolved—so far as they ever can be, that is, and let me tell ye that it's neither a quick nor an easy business—if it comes to that, Sister, there'll be no going back. No cringing round to the convent afterwards, when ye find there's no place and no welcome for ye in the world, asking to be taken back. They'll not have ye, Sister, and they'll be right. If ye go, it's for ever."
It seemed to Alex that he was purposely seeking to frighten her—that he wanted to add fresh miseries and apprehensions to those already piled upon her, and a faint resentment flicked at her in questioning acceptance of such an assumption.
The shadow of spirit thus restored to her, just enabled her to endure the seemingly endless exposition hurled at her in the priest's powerful voice.
When it was all over, she crawled out of the room like a creature that had been beaten.
Stunned, she only knew that yet another fellow-creature had entered the league of those who were angered against her.