"But annulment! Isn't that possible—under the circumstances?" I asked.
The good old priest seemed to be too confused to speak for a moment. Then he explained that what I hoped for was quite out of the question.
"I don't say that in the history of the Church marriages have not been annulled on equally uncertain grounds, but in this case the civil law would require proof—something to justify nullity. Failing that there would have to be collusion either on one side or both, and that is not possible—not to you, my child, not to the daughter of your mother, that dear saint who suffered so long and was silent."
More than ever now I felt like a ship-broken man with the last plank sinking under him. The cold mysterious dread of my husband was creeping back, and the future of my life with him stood before me with startling vividness. In spite of all my struggling and fighting of the night before I saw myself that very night, the next night, and the next, and every night and day of my life thereafter, a victim of the same sickening terror.
"Must I submit, then?" I said.
Father Dan smoothed my head and told me in his soft voice that submission was the lot of all women. It always had been so in the history of the world, and perhaps it always would be.
"Remember the Epistle we read in church yesterday morning: 'Wives submit yourselves to your husbands.'"
With a choking sensation in my throat I asked if he thought I ought to go away with my husband when he left the island by the afternoon steamer.
"I see no escape from it, my poor child. They sent me to reprove you. I can't do that, but neither can I encourage you to resist. It would be wrong. It would be cruel. It would only lead you into further trouble."
My mouth felt parched, but I contrived to say: