“You don’t know what a hell you’re making for me when you talk like that,” she gasped.  “If I did encourage you, then my sin is a thousand times blacker.”

“Oh, don’t exaggerate, my dear girl,” he said wearily.  “It isn’t a sin for two people to love each other.”

“I’ve tried my best to think as you do, but I can’t.  I’ve avoided going to church.  I’ve tried to hate religion, I’ve mocked at God . . .” she broke off in despair of explaining the force of grace, against the gift of which she had contended in vain.

“I always thought you were brave, Essie.  But you’re a real coward.  The reason for all this is your fear of being pitchforked into a big bonfire by a pantomime demon with horns and a long tail.”  He laughed bitterly.  “To think that you, my adored Essie, should really have the soul of a Sunday school teacher.  You, a Bacchante of passion, to be puling about your sins.  You!  You!  Girl, you’re mad!  I tell you there is no such thing as damnation.  It’s a bogey invented by priests to enchain mankind.  But if there is and if that muddle-headed old gentleman you call God really exists and if he’s a just God, why then let him damn me and let him give you your harp and your halo while I burn for both.  Essie, my mad foolish frightened Essie, can’t you understand that if you give me up for this God of yours you’ll drive me to murder.  If I must marry you to hold you, why then I’ll kill that cursed wife of mine. . . .”

It was his turn now to break off in despair of being able to express his will to keep Esther for his own, and because argument seemed so hopeless he tried to take her in his arms, whereupon Mark who was aching with the effort to maintain himself unobserved upon the bough of the yew-tree said his Paternosters and Aves faster than ever, that she might have the strength to resist that scoundrel of Rushbrooke Grange.  He longed to have the eloquence to make some wonderful prayer to the Blessed Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene so that a miracle might happen and their images point accusing hands at the blasphemer below.

And then it seemed as if a miracle did happen, for out of the jangle of recriminations and appeals that now signified no more than the noise of trees in a storm he heard the voice of Esther gradually gain its right to be heard, gradually win from its rival silence until the tale was told.

“I know that I am overcome by the saving grace of God,” she was saying.  “And I know that I owe it to them.”  She pointed to the holy women above the door.  The squire shook his fist; but he still kept silence.  “I have run away from God since I knew you, Will.  I have loved you as much as that.  I have gone to church only when I had to go for my brother’s sake, but I have actually stuffed my ears with cotton wool so that no word there spoken might shake my faith in my right to love you.  But it was all to no purpose.  You know that it was you who told me