en to; my
disappearance from home and the circumstances of my recovery; my
husband's petition for divorce and the disclosures that had followed it.

But sad and serious and even tragic as all this might be, it was as
nothing (in the eyes of the Church and of God) compared with the awful
gravity of the step I now contemplated--a second marriage while my
husband was still alive.

She had nothing to say against Martin. Except the facts that concerned
myself she had never heard a word to his discredit. She could even
understand those facts, though she could not condone them. Perhaps he
had seen my position (married to a cruel and unfaithful husband) and his
pity had developed into love--she had heard of such happenings.

"But only think, my child, what an abyss he is driving you to! He asks
you to break your marriage vows! . . . Oh, yes, yes, I can see what he
will say--that pressure was put upon you and you were too young to know
what you were doing. That may be true, but it isn't everything. I
thought it wrong, cruelly wrong, that your father should choose a
husband for you without regard to your wish and will. But it was you,
not your father, who made your marriage vows, and you can never get away
from that--never!"

Those marriage vows were sacred; our blessed Saviour had said they
could never be broken, and our holy Church had taken His Commandment for
law.

"Think, my child, only think what would happen to the world if every
woman who has made an unhappy marriage were to do as you think of doing.
What a chaos! What an uprooting of all the sacred ties of home and
family! And how women would suffer--women and children above all. Don't
you see that, my daughter?"

The security of society lay in the sanctity of marriage; the sanctity of
marriage lay in its indissolubility; and its indissolubility centred in
the fact that God was a party to it.

"Perhaps you are told that your marriage will be your own concern only
and that God and the Church have nothing to do with it. But if women had
believed that in all ages, how different the world would be to-day! Oh,
believe me, your marriage vow is sacred, and you cannot break it without
sin--mortal sin, my daughter."

The moral of all this was that I must renounce Martin Conrad, wash my
heart clean of my love of him, shun the temptation of seeing him again,
and if possible forget him altogether.

"It will be hard. I know it will he hard, but. . . ."

"It will be quite