We sat, and for a moment he did not speak.  Then with a passionate rush of words he said: 

“Mary, I hadn’t meant to say what I’m going to say now, but I can’t do anything else.  You are in trouble, and I can’t stand by and see you so ill-used.  I can’t and I won’t!”

I tried to answer him, but my throat was fluttering and I could not speak.

“It’s only a few days before I ought to sail, but they may be enough in which to do something, and if they’re not I’ll postpone the expedition or put it off, or send somebody in my place, for go away I cannot and leave you like this.”

I tried to say that he should not do that whatever happened to me, but still I could not speak.

“Mary.  I want to help you.  But I can only do so if you give me the right to do it.  Nobody must tell me I’m a meddler, butting in where I have no business.  There are people enough about you who would be only too ready to do that—­people related to you by blood and by law.”

I knew what he was coming to, for his voice was quivering in my ears like the string of a bow.

“There is only one sort of right, Mary, that is above the right of blood, and you know what that is.”

My eyes were growing so dim that I could hardly see the face which was so close to mine.

“Mary,” he said, “I have always cared for you.  Surely you know that.  By the saints of God I swear there has never been any other girl for me, and now there never will he.  Perhaps I ought to have told you this before, and I wanted to do so when I met you in Rome.  But it didn’t seem fair, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

His passionate voice was breaking; I thought my heart was breaking also.

“All I could do I did, but it came to nothing; and now you are here and you are unhappy, and though it is so late I want to help you, to rescue you, to drag you out of this horrible situation before I go away.  Let me do it.  Give me the right of one you care enough for to allow him to speak on your behalf.”

I knew what that meant.  I knew that I was tottering on the very edge of a precipice, and to save myself I tried to think of Father Dan, of Martin’s mother, of my own mother, and since I could not speak I struggled to pray.

“Don’t say you can’t.  If you do I shall go away a sorrowful man.  I shall go at once too—­to-night or to-morrow morning at latest, for my heart bleeds to look at you and I can’t stay here any longer to see you suffer.  It is not torture to me—­it’s hell!”

And then the irrepressible, overwhelming, inevitable moment came.  Martin laid hold of my right hand and said in his tremulous voice: 

“Mary . . .  Mary . . .  I . . .  I love you!”

I could hear no more.  I could not think or pray or resist any longer.  The bitter struggle was at an end.  Before I knew what I was doing I was dropping my head on to his breast and he with a cry of joy was gathering me in his arms.