ggerate. You don't know how much you are exaggerating. You don't
understand."

"I thought you wanted me to have faith! How can I have faith when I hear
of priests degrading our love? What right had you to go to a priest?
What does he know of you or me? What has he suffered? What does he
understand? Why do you listen to him and pay no heed to me? What did you
say?"

Pauline looked at him in silence.

"What did you say?" he repeated, angrily. He was caring for nothing at
that moment but to tear from her the history of the scene that made a
furnace of his brain. "He must have tried to put the idea into your head
that you've been doing wrong. I say you have done nothing wrong. I
suppose you told him you came out at night with me on the river, and I
suppose he concluded from that.... Oh, Pauline, I cannot let you be a
prey to the mind of a priest. You don't realize what it means to me. You
don't realise the raging jealousy it rouses."

"Guy," she moaned, "love is too much for me. I can't bear the
uncertainty. Your debts ... the sending back of your poems ... the fear
that we shall never be married ... the doubts ... the thought that I've
deceived my family ... the misery I bring to you because I can't think
everything is right...."

"I don't want you always to agree with me. I've promised never to ask
you again to come out with me at night. I'll even promise never to kiss
you again until we are married. But you must promise me never again to
go to Confession."

"I can't give up what I believe is right," she said.

"Then I won't give up what I believe is right."

He strained her to him and kissed her lips so closely that they were
white instead of red. Then he went from her in an impulse to let her, if
she would, break off the engagement. If he had stayed he must have
blasphemed the religion which was soiling with its murk their love. He
must have hurt her so deeply that he would have compelled her to bid him
never come back. It was for her now, the responsibility of going on, and
she should find what religion would do for her when she was left alone
to battle with the infamous suggestions the fiction was giving to her
mind. She should find that beside his love religion was nothing, that
the folly would topple down and betray her at this very moment. When
next he saw her, she would have forgotten her priests and their mummery;
she would think only of him and live only for him.

"Blow, you damned wind," he shouted t