Not once had her voice betrayed excitement or emotion.  Not once had it risen above its normal tone; and in her eyes, as they turned from the lake to him, there was the tranquillity of a child.

“And that madness,” she resumed, “was the madness of a man whose brain and soul were overwrought in one colossal hatred—­a hatred of divorce and the laws that made it possible.  It was born in him in a day, and it lived until his death.  It turned him from the paths of men, and we became wanderers upon the face of the earth.  Two years after the ruin of our home my mother and the man she had married died in a ship that was lost at sea.  This had no effect upon my father.  Possibly you will not understand what grew up between us in the years and years that followed.  To the end he was a scientist, a man seeking after the unknown, and my education came to be a composite of teachings gathered in all parts of the world.  We were never apart.  We were more than father and daughter; we were friends, comrades—­he was my world, and I was his.

“I recall, as I became older, how his hatred of that thing that had broken our home developed more and more strongly in me.  His mind was titanic.  A thousand times I pleaded with him to employ it in the great fight I wanted him to make—­a fight against the crime divorce.  I know, now, why he did not.  He was thinking of me.  Only one thing he asked of me.  It was more than a request.  It was a command.  And this command, and my promise, was that so long as I lived—­no matter what might happen in my life—­I would sacrifice myself body and soul sooner than allow that black monster of divorce to fasten its clutches on me.  It is futile for me to tell you these things, John Aldous.  It is impossible—­you cannot understand!”

“I can,” he replied, scarcely above a whisper.  “Joanne, I begin—­to understand!”

And still without emotion, her voice as calm as the unruffled lake at their feet, she continued: 

“It grew in me.  It is a part of me now.  I hate divorce as I hate the worst sin that bars one from Heaven.  It is the one thing I hate.  And it is because of this hatred that I suffered myself to remain the wife of the man whose name is over that grave down there—­Mortimer FitzHugh.  It came about strangely—­what I am going to tell you now.  You will wonder.  You will think I was insane.  But remember, John Aldous—­the world had come to hold but one friend and comrade for me, and he was my father.  It was after Mindano.  He caught the fever, and he was dying.”

For the first time her breath choked her.  It was only for an instant.  She recovered herself, and went on: