"So you said in your letters. But after posting my letter I said to myself: if it causes me trouble, how much more will it cause her?"
"Your letter did trouble me, Ned. I was feeling very weak that morning and the baby was crying for me, for I had been nursing him for a week. I did not know what to do. I was torn both ways, so I sent up a note to Father Brennan asking him to come to see me, and he came down and told me that I was quite free to give my baby to a foster-mother."
"But what does Father Brennan know about it more than anyone of us?"
"The sanction of the Church, Ned—"
"The sanction of the Church! What childish nonsense is this?" he said. "The authority of a priest. So it was not for me, but because a priest—"
"But, Ned, there must be a code of morality, and these men devote their lives to thinking out one for us."
He could see that she was looking more charming than she had ever looked before, but her beauty could not crush the anger out of him; and she never seemed further from him, not even when the Atlantic divided them.
"Those men devote their lives to thinking out a code of morality for us! You submit your soul to their keeping. And what remains of you when you have given over your soul?"
"But, Ned, why this outbreak? You knew I was a Catholic when you married me."
"Yes, ... of course, and I'm sorry, Ellen, for losing my temper. But it is only in Ireland that women submit themselves body and soul. It is extraordinary; it is beyond human reason."