My heart was yearning for love, but my soul was crying out for salvation; and not being able to answer him for myself, I told him what Father Dan had said I was to say.
"Father Dan is a saint and I love him," he said. "But what can he know—what can any priest know of a situation like this? The law of man has tied you to this brute, but the law of God has given you to me. Why should a marriage service stand between us?"
"But it does," I said. "And we can't alter it. No, no, I dare not break the law of the Church. I am a weak, wretched girl, but I cannot give up my religion."
After that Martin did not speak for a moment. Then he said:
"You mean that, Mary?"
"Yes."
And then my heart accused me so terribly of the crime of resisting him that I took his hand and held his fingers in a tight lock while I told him—what I had never meant to tell—how long and how deeply I had loved him, but nevertheless I dared not face the thought of living and dying without the consolations of the Church.
"I dare not! I dare not!" I said. "I should be a broken-hearted woman if I did, and you don't want that, do you?"
He listened in silence, though the irregular lines in his face showed the disordered state of his soul, and when I had finished a wild look came into his eyes and he said:
"I am disappointed in you, Mary. I thought you were brave and fearless, and that when I showed you a way out of your miserable entanglement you would take it in spite of everything."