My mouth felt parched, but I contrived to say: 

“Then you can hold out no hope for me?”

“God knows I can’t.”

“Although I do not love this man I must live with him as his wife?”

“It is hard, very hard, but there seems to be no help for it.”

I rose to my feet, and went back to the window.  A wild impulse of rebellion was coming over me.

“I shall feel like a bad woman,” I said.

“Don’t say that,” said Father Dan.  “You are married to the man anyway.”

“All the same I shall feel like my husband’s mistress—­his married mistress, his harlot.”

Father Dan was shocked, and the moment the words were out of my mouth I was more frightened than I had ever been before, for something within seemed to have forced them out of me.

When I recovered possession of my senses Father Dan, nervously fumbling with the silver cross that hung over his cassock, was talking of the supernatural effect of the sacrament of marriage.  It was God Who joined people together, and whom God joined together no man might put asunder.  No circumstances either, no trial or tribulation.  Could it be thought that a bond so sacred, so indissoluble, was ever made without good effect?  No, the Almighty had His own ways with His children, and this great mystery of holy wedlock was one of them.

“So don’t lose heart, my child.  Who knows what may happen yet?  God works miracles now just as He did in the old days.  You may come . . . yes, you may come to love your husband, and then—­then all will be well.”

Suddenly out of my despair and my defiance a new thought came to me.  It came with the memory of the emotion I had experienced during the marriage service, and it thrilled me through and through.

“Father Dan?” I said, with a nervous cry, for my heart was fluttering again.

“What is it, my child?”

It was hard to say what I was thinking about, but with a great effort I stammered it out at last.  I should be willing to leave the island with my husband, and live under the same roof with him, and bear his name, so that there might be no trouble, or scandal, and nobody except ourselves might ever know that there was anything dividing us, any difference of any kind between us, if he, on his part, would promise—­firmly and faithfully promise—­that unless and until I came to love him he would never claim my submission as a wife.

While I spoke I hardly dared to look at Father Dan, fearing he would shake his head again, perhaps reprove me, perhaps laugh at me.  But his eyes which had been moist began to sparkle and smile.

“You mean that?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you will go away with him on that condition?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then he must agree to it.”

The pure-minded old priest saw no difficulties, no dangers, no risks of breakdown in my girlish scheme.  Already my husband had got all he had bargained for.  He had got my father’s money in exchange for his noble name, and if he wanted more, if he wanted the love of his wife, let him earn it, let him win it.