"What's that you're saying, ma'am? . . . Motherhood a sacred and holy state also? 'Deed it is, ma'am! That's truth enough too, though some ones who shut themselves up in convents don't seem to think so. . . . A mother's a mother, and what's more, her child is her child, wedlock or no wedlock. And if she's doing right by her little one, and bringing it up well, and teaching it true, I don't know that when her time comes the Lord will be asking her which side of her wedding-day it was born on. . . .
"As for Mary O'Neill, ma'am, when you're talking and talking about her saving her soul, you're forgetting she has her child to save too, ma'am. God gave her the boght villish, and is she to run away from it? It's a fine blessing would be on her for that, isn't it? . . . Father Dan, I'm surprised at you—such a terrible, cruel, shocking, unnatural thing as you're thinking. I thought you were a better man than that—I really did. . . . And as for some ones that call themselves Mothers, they're no mothers at all and never will be—tempting a poor woman in her trouble to leave her child to be a charge on other people. . . ."
Still another rumble of soft voices and then—
"Not that I'm thinking of myself, ma'am. Dear heart, no! It's only too eager I'd be to have the lil angel to myself. There she is on the hearthrug, ma'am, and if anything happens to Mary O'Neill, it's there she'll be for the rest of my life, and it's sorry I am for the darling's sake that my time cannot be longer. . . .
"But Mary O'Neill isn't for leaving her little one to go into any convent. 'Deed no, ma'am! There would be no rest on her if she did. I'm a mother myself and I know what she'd be feeling. You might put the black hood on her head, but Nature's a wonderful powerful thing, and she'd never go to bed at night or get up in the morning without thinking of her baby. 'Where's she now?' she'd be asking herself. 'What's happening to my motherless child?' she'd be saying. And as the years went on she'd be thinking, 'Is she well, and has she taken her first communion, and is she growing up a good woman, and what's the world doing on her?' . . .
"No, ma'am, no! Mary O'Neill will go into no convent while her child is here to be cared for! 'Deed she won't! Not Mary O'Neill! I'll never believe it of her! Never in this world!"
I heard nothing more for a long time after that—nothing but a noise in my own head which drowned all other noises. And when I recovered my composure the Reverend Mother and Father Dan must have gone, for there was no sound in the room below except that of the rocking-chair (which was going rapidly) and Christian Ann's voice, fierce but broken as if baby had cried and she was comforting her.
Then a great new spirit came to me. It was Motherhood again! The mighty passion of motherhood—which another mighty passion had temporarily overlaid—sweeping down on me once more out of the big, simple, child-like heart of my Martin's mother.
In the fever of body and brain at that moment it seemed to solve all the problems of life for me.
If the Commandment of God forbade me to marry again because I had already taken vows before the altar (no matter how innocently or under what constraint), and if I had committed a sin, a great sin, and baby was the living sign of it, there was only one thing left me to do—to remain as I was and consecrate the rest of my life to my child.