answers? If so, then God is
responsible for some of the most shocking transactions that ever
disgraced humanity--all the pride and vanity and deliberate concubinage
that have covered themselves in every age, and are covering themselves
still, with the cloak of marriage."

"But no," said Martin, "it's not in churches that God marries people.
They've got to be married before they go there, or they are never
married at all--never! They've got to be married in their _hearts_, for
that's where God joins people together, not in churches and before
priests and altars."

I sat listening to him with a rising and throbbing heart, and after
another moment he stepped into the garden-house, and sat beside me.

"Mary," he said, in his passionate voice, "that's our case, isn't it?
God married us from the very first. There has never been any other woman
for me, and there never has been any other man for you--isn't that so,
my darling? . . . Then what are they talking about--these churches and
churchmen? It's _they_ who are the real divorcers--trying to put those
asunder whom God Himself has joined together. That's the plain sense of
the matter, isn't it?"

I was trembling with fear and expectation. Perhaps it was the same with
me as it had been before; perhaps I wanted (now more than ever) to
believe what Martin was saying; perhaps I did not know enough to be able
to answer him; perhaps my overpowering love and the position I stood in
compelled me to agree. But I could not help it if it seemed to me that
his clear mind--clear as a mountain river and as swift and strong--was
sweeping away all the worn-out sophistries.

"Then what . . . what are we to do?" I asked him.

"Do? Our duty to ourselves, my darling, that's what we have to do. If we
cannot be married according to the law of the Church, we must be married
according to the law of the land. Isn't that enough? This is our own
affair, dearest, ours and nobody else's. It's only a witness we want
anyway--a witness before God and man that we intend to be man and wife
in future."

"But Father Dan?"

"Leave him to me," said Martin. "I'll tell him everything. But come into
the house now. You are catching a cold. Unless we take care they'll kill
you before they've done."

Next day he leaned over the back of my chair as I sat in the _chiollagh_
with baby in my lap, and said, in a low tone:

"I've seen Father Dan."

"Well?"

"The old angel took it badly. 'God forbid that you