Nancy sat up from her pillows.  “Oh—­and you did?”

“Nancy!” It was low, but clear, quick-spoken, stern, and hurt.  “You forget yourself.  At least you forget my view and the view of my Church.  Even were I out of the Church, I should still regard marriage as a sacrament—­indissoluble except by death.  The very words—­’Whom God hath joined’”—­he became almost oratorical in his warmth—­“Surely you would not expect me to use my influence in this parish to undermine the sanctity of the home—­to attack our emblem of Christ’s union with His Church!”

With reproach in his eyes—­a reproach that in some way seemed to be bland and mellow, yet with a hurt droop to his handsome head, he went from the room.  Nancy looked after him, longingly, wonderingly.

“The maddening thing is, Aunt Bell, that sometimes he actually has the power to make me believe in him.  But, oh, doesn’t Christ’s union with his Church have some ghastly symbols!”

CHAPTER IX

SINFUL PERVERSENESS OF THE NATURAL WOMAN

Two months later a certain tension in the rectory of St. Antipas was temporarily relieved.  Like the spring of a watch wound too tightly, it snapped one day at Nancy’s declaration that she would go to Edom for a time—­would go, moreover, without a reason—­without so much as a woman’s easy “because.”  This circumstance, while it froze in the bud every available objection to her course, quelled none of the displeasure that was felt at her woman’s perversity.

Her decision was announced one morning after a sleepless night, and after she had behaved unaccountably for three days.

“You are not pleasing Allan,” was Aunt Bell’s masterly way of putting the situation.  Nancy laughed from out of the puzzling reserve into which she had lately settled.

“So he tells me, Aunt Bell.  He utters it with the air of telling me something necessarily to my discredit—­yet I wonder whose fault it really is.”

“Well, of all things!” Aunt Bell made no effort to conceal her amazement.

“It isn’t necessarily mine, you know.”  Before the mirror she brought the veil nicely about the edge of her hat, with the strained and solemn absorption of a woman in this shriving of her reflection so that it may go out in peace.

“My failure to please Allan, you know, may as easily be due to his defects as to mine.  I said so, but he only answered, ’Really, you’re not pleasing me.’  And, as he often says of his own predicaments—­’What could I do?’ But I’m glad he persists in it.”

“Why, if you resent it so?”

“Because, Aunt Bell, I must be quite—­quite certain that Allan is funny.  It would be dreadful to make a mistake.  If only I could be certain—­positive—­convinced—­sure—­that Allan is the funniest thing in all the world—­”

“It never occurred to me that Allan is funny.”  Aunt Bell paused for an instant’s retrospect.  “Now, he doesn’t joke much.”