e me with startling
vividness. In spite of all my struggling and fighting of the night
before I saw myself that very night, the next night, and the next, and
every night and day of my life thereafter, a victim of the same
sickening terror.

"Must I submit, then?" I said.

Father Dan smoothed my head and told me in his soft voice that
submission was the lot of all women. It always had been so in the
history of the world, and perhaps it always would be.

"Remember the Epistle we read in church yesterday morning: 'Wives submit
yourselves to your husbands.'"

With a choking sensation in my throat I asked if he thought I ought to
go away with my husband when he left the island by the afternoon
steamer.

"I see no escape from it, my poor child. They sent me to reprove you. I
can't do that, but neither can I encourage you to resist. It would be
wrong. It would be cruel. It would only lead you into further trouble."

My mouth felt parched, but I contrived to say:

"Then you can hold out no hope for me?"

"God knows I can't."

"Although I do not love this man I must live with him as his wife?"

"It is hard, very hard, but there seems to be no help for it."

I rose to my feet, and went back to the window. A wild impulse of
rebellion was coming over me.

"I shall feel like a bad woman," I said.

"Don't say that," said Father Dan. "You are married to the man anyway."

"All the same I shall feel like my husband's mistress--his married
mistress, his harlot."

Father Dan was shocked, and the moment the words were out of my mouth I
was more frightened than I had ever been before, for something within
seemed to have forced them out of me.

When I recovered possession of my senses Father Dan, nervously fumbling
with the silver cross that hung over his cassock, was talking of the
supernatural effect of the sacrament of marriage. It was God Who joined
people together, and whom God joined together no man might put asunder.
No circumstances either, no trial or tribulation. Could it be thought
that a bond so sacred, so indissoluble, was ever made without good
effect? No, the Almighty had His own ways with His children, and this
great mystery of holy wedlock was one of them.

"So don't lose heart, my child. Who knows what may happen yet? God works
miracles now just as He did in the old days. You may come . . . yes, you
may come to love your husband, and then--then all will be well."

Suddenly out of my despair and my def