"Well, don't you see what it comes to? You are free—morally free at all events. You can come to me. You must, too. I daren't leave you in this house any longer. I shall take you to London and fix you up there, and then, when I tome back from the Antarctic . . ."
He was glowing with joy, but a cold hand suddenly seized me, for I had remembered all the terrors of excommunication as Father Dan had described them.
"But Martin," I said, "would the Church accept that?"
"What matter whether it would or wouldn't? Our consciences would be clear. There would be no sin, and what you were saying this morning would not apply."
"But if I left my husband I couldn't marry you, could I?"
"Perhaps not."
"Then the Church would say that I was a sinful woman living a sinful life, wouldn't it?"
"But you wouldn't be."
"All the same the Church would say so, and if it did I should be cut out of communion, and if I were cut out of communion I should be cast out of the Church, and if I were cast out of the Church . . . what would become of me then?"
"But, my dear, dear girl," said Martin, "don't you see that this is not the same thing at all? It is only a case of a ceremony. And why should a mere ceremony—even if we cannot do away with it—darken a woman's life for ever?"