"Yes."
"Ah, that's the point. They do what they think is right, but a Catholic does what she knows is wrong, and begins her new marriage in a wilful sin, so what can grow from it but more sin?"
Her voice, naturally full and resonant like a trained speaker's, was thin and uncertain as she told of the apostate. Her other self, the woman of the past, was ascendant, but she fought against what she conceived to be a momentary weakness, and forced her resolution as a skillful rider forces an unwilling horse over a jump. "But if you want me," she said in words that trembled, "you can have me."
"If I want you——" He took her in his arms and kissed her.
It seemed to her definitely in that instant that nothing could ever be quite the same with her again, that a certain fine purity had passed from her forever and she must live thereafter on a lower plane.
All the modernistic teachings, books, lectures, pamphlets with which she had in recent years packed her head, on woman's right to selfhood, parasitic females, prostitution in marriage, endowed motherhood, sexual slavery; and all the practical philosophy of the success school which she had learned from years of contact with money-makers, that life is more for the daring than for the good, were washed away by the earlier-formed and deeper-lying impressions of her youth.
She was aware of a fleeting return of her virginal feeling that to give herself to one man was humbleness sufficient for a lifetime; but to give herself to two would be the permanent lowering of pride.
But she felt that for her the moving finger had writ and passed. There could be no more going back or shadow of turning. Henceforth, for good or evil, she belonged to this man.
She yielded to his kisses, as many as he wished, in passive submission.
"You will always be good to me—promise that, promise me, dear," she begged, "because if you're not I'll——" Her voice choked and two tears rolled down her cheeks. Gone was her freedom and her pride. She spoke, not as her ideal had been, partner speaking to partner on even terms, but as a servant to her master, asking not justice but mercy.