“Beware of the temptations of the flesh, my children,” said the priest.  “The Evil One is very subtle, and not only in our moments of pride and prosperity, but also in our hours of sorrow and affliction, he is for ever waiting and watching to betray us to our downfall and damnation.”

In the rustling that followed the sermon a poor woman who sat next to me, with a print handkerchief over her head, whispered in my ear that she was sorry she had not brought her husband, for he had given way to drink, poor fellow, since the island had had such good times and wages had been so high.

But the message came closer home to me.  Remembering the emotions of the night before, I prayed fervently to be strengthened against all temptation and preserved from all sin.  And when the mass was resumed I recalled some of the good words with which I had been taught to assist at the Holy Sacrifice—­praying at the Credo that as I had become a child in the bosom of the Church I might live and die in it.

When the service was over I felt more at ease and I emptied my purse, I remember, partly into the plate and partly to the poor people at the church door.

It was in this spirit that I returned home in the broad sunshine of noonday.  But half way up the drive I met Martin walking briskly down to meet me.  He was bareheaded and in flannels; and I could not help it if he looked to me so good, so strong, and so well able to protect a woman against every danger, that the instructions I had received in church, and the resolutions I had formed there, seemed to run out of my heart as rapidly as the dry sand of the sea-shore runs through one’s fingers.

“Helloa!” he cried, as usual.  “The way I’ve been wasting this wonderful morning over letters and telegrams!  But not another minute will I give to anything under the stars of God but you.”

If there was any woman in the world who could have resisted that greeting I was not she, and though I was a little confused I was very happy.

As we walked back to the house we talked of my father and his sudden illness, then of his mother and my glimpse of her, and finally of indifferent things, such as the weather, which had been a long drought and might end in a deluge.

By a sort of mutual consent we never once spoke of the central subject of our thoughts—­my marriage and its fatal consequences—­but I noticed that Martin’s voice was soft and caressing, that he was walking close to my side, and that as often as I looked up at him he was looking down at me and smiling.

It was the same after luncheon when we went out into the garden and sat on a seat in the shrubbery almost immediately facing my windows, and he spread a chart on a rustic table and pointing to a red line on it said: 

“Look, this is the course of our new cruise, please God.”

He talked for a long time, about his captain and crew; the scientific experts who had volunteered to accompany him, his aeronautic outfit, his sledges and his skis; but whatever he talked about—­if it was only his dogs and the food he had found for them—­it was always in that soft, caressing voice which made me feel as if (though he never said one word of love) he were making love to me, and saying the sweetest things a man could say to a woman.