be thinking, 'Is she well, and has she taken her first
communion, and is she growing up a good woman, and what's the world
doing on her?' . . .

"No, ma'am, no! Mary O'Neill will go into no convent while her child is
here to be cared for! 'Deed she won't! Not Mary O'Neill! I'll never
believe it of her! Never in this world!"

I heard nothing more for a long time after that--nothing but a noise in
my own head which drowned all other noises. And when I recovered my
composure the Reverend Mother and Father Dan must have gone, for there
was no sound in the room below except that of the rocking-chair (which
was going rapidly) and Christian Ann's voice, fierce but broken as if
baby had cried and she was comforting her.

Then a great new spirit came to me. It was Motherhood again! The mighty
passion of motherhood--which another mighty passion had temporarily
overlaid--sweeping down on me once more out of the big, simple,
child-like heart of my Martin's mother.

In the fever of body and brain at that moment it seemed to solve all the
problems of life for me.

If the Commandment of God forbade me to marry again because I had
already taken vows before the altar (no matter how innocently or under
what constraint), and if I had committed a sin, a great sin, and baby
was the living sign of it, there was only one thing left me to do--to
remain as I was and consecrate the rest of my life to my child.

That would be the real expiation, not burying myself in a convent. To
live for my child! Alone with her! Here, where my sin had been, to work
out my atonement!

This pleased and stirred and uplifted me very much when I first thought
of it. And even when I remembered Martin, and thought how hard it would
be to tear myself away from the love which waited with open arms for me
(So near, so sweet, so precious), there seemed to be something majestic,
almost sublime, in the sacrifice I was about to make--the sacrifice of
everything in the world (except one thing) that was dearer to me than
life itself.

A sort of spiritual pride came with the thought of this sacrifice. I saw
myself as a woman who, having pledged herself to God in her marriage and
sinned against the law in breaking her marriage vows, was now going to
accept her fate and to humble herself before the bar of Eternal Justice.

But oh, what a weak, vain thing I was, just when I thought I was so
strong and noble!

After a long day in which I had been fighting back the pai