"'Let no man say he is tempted of God when he is driven by his own lusts and enticed,'" said the Vicar.
He had risen, and the movement brought him face to face with Gwenda. And as she looked at him it was as if she saw vividly and for the first time the profound unspirituality of her father's face. She knew from what source his eyes drew their darkness. She understood the meaning of the gross red mouth that showed itself in the fierce lifting of the ascetic, grim moustache. And she conceived a horror of his fatherhood.
"No man ought to say that of his own daughter. How does he know what's her own and what's his?" she said.
Rowcliffe stared at her in a sort of awful admiration. She was terrible; she was fierce; she was mad. But it was the fierceness and the madness of pity and of compassion.
She went on.
"You've no business to be hard on her. You must have known."
"I knew nothing," said the Vicar.
He appealed to her with a helpless gesture of his hands.
"You did know. You were warned. You were told not to shut her up. And you did shut her up. You can't blame her if she got away. You flung her to Jim Greatorex. There wasn't anybody who cared for her but him."
"Cared for her!" He snarled his disgust.