In his agitation he rose, walked two or three paces in front and came back to me.

“Then think what it means if your marriage may not be dissolved.  It means that you must go on living with this man whose life is so degrading.  Year in, year out, as long as your life lasts you must let him humiliate and corrupt you with his company, his companions and his example, until you are dragged down, down, down to the filth he lives in himself, and your very soul is contaminated.  Is that what the Church asks of you?”

I answered no, and tried to tell him what the Bishop had told me about separation, but he interrupted me with a shout.

“Separation?  Did he say that?  If the Church has no right to divorce you what right has it to separate you?  Oh, I see what it will say—­hope of reconciliation.  But if you were separated from your husband would you ever go back to him?  Never in this world.  Then what would your separation be?  Only divorce under another name.”

I was utterly shaken.  Perhaps I wanted to believe what Martin was saying; perhaps I did not know enough to answer him, but I could not help it if I thought Martin’s clear mind was making dust and ashes of everything that Father Dan and the Bishop had said to me.

“Then what can I do?” I asked.

I thought his face quivered at that question.  He got up again, and stood before me for a moment without speaking.  Then he said, with an obvious effort—­

“If your Church will not allow you to divorce your husband, and if you and I cannot marry without that, then . . .”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t mean to propose it . . .  God knows I didn’t, but when a woman . . . when a woman has been forced into a loveless marriage, and it is crushing the very soul out of her, and the iron law of her Church will not permit her to escape from it, what crime does she commit if she . . .”

“Well?” I asked, though I saw what he was going to say.

“Mary,” he said, breathing, hard and fast, “you must come to me.”

I made a sudden cry, though I tried not to.

“Oh, I know,” he said.  “It’s not what we could wish.  But we’ll be open about it.  We’ll face it out.  Why shouldn’t we?  I shall anyway.  And if your father and the Bishop say anything to me I’ll tell them what I think of the abominable marriage they forced you into.  As for you, dear, I know you’ll have to bear something.  All the conventional canting hypocrisies!  Every man who has bought his wife, and every woman who has sold herself into concubinage—­there are thousands and thousands of them all the world over, and they’ll try . . . perhaps they’ll try . . . but let them try.  If they want to trample the life out of you they’ll have to walk over me first—­yes, by God they will!”

“But Martin . . .”

“Well?”

“Do you mean that I . . .  I am . . . to . . . to live with you without marriage?”