"That settles it," said he between his teeth. "You'd made it plain enough with your silence. I said I'd come when you sent for me. I waited and waited, but you never sent. Every single day I've looked in the mail hoping, and the only thing I got from you was—money. And when I found that Connor had left you, had been gone a year, I had a little hope again that—Oh, Georgia," he exclaimed in his wretchedness, "you did care for me once. Why did you stop?"
"I haven't stopped, Mason, but—" she motioned toward the priest in his black and solemn garments, standing beside them like a stern guardian, "but—" she said, and her shoulders seemed to droop forward irresolutely, "I'm helpless."
Stevens took a step toward Father Hervey and there was almost a threat in his gesture. "Don't you see," he said, his two fists clenched, "that if someone in the barroom had cracked Jim Connor over the head with a whiskey bottle during his last spree or if DTs had hit him five per cent harder afterwards—I could have her with your blessing—and we'd be happy—oh, so happy as we'd be, Georgia! It isn't as if I wanted to break up a home. The home's broken up already. Don't you see? And you're telling her she can't move out of the wreck. She's got to sit in the rubbish as long as the man who made it is able to make more."
"Young man," the priest answered not unkindly, "will you listen for a moment to an old man? I believe that you are a decent sort—that your love for Georgia is honest—"
"If there is any honesty in me," and Stevens' voice caught and broke.
"Yours, I am afraid," Father Hervey went on, including them both in his words, "is an example of those rare and exceptional cases where at the first sight marriage and divorce would seem almost permissible—"
"Yes," Stevens interrupted eagerly.
"But those cases, too," continued the priest in his melodious, resonant, trained voice, "have been thoroughly contemplated and considered by the deep wisdom of the Church." He waited an instant, then pronounced sentence.
"They must be sacrificed for the rest. For if a single exception were once made, others would inevitably follow; and just as a trickle through a dike becomes a stream, and the stream a torrent, so whole people would be inundated in a flood of bestiality. If Georgia is, as you say—in any sense deprived of her womanhood, it is for the sake of millions on millions of others, who while the Church can raise her voice—and that, my friend, will be while the world lasts—shall not be abandoned in their helplessness."
But Stevens, who had not been listening to the priest's words as soon as he saw what conclusion they were coming to, clapped his hands softly together and smiled.