too ready to do that--people related to you by blood and by law."

I knew what he was coming to, for his voice was quivering in my ears
like the string of a bow.

"There is only one sort of right, Mary, that is above the right of
blood, and you know what that is."

My eyes were growing so dim that I could hardly see the face which was
so close to mine.

"Mary," he said, "I have always cared for you. Surely you know that. By
the saints of God I swear there has never been any other girl for me,
and now there never will he. Perhaps I ought to have told you this
before, and I wanted to do so when I met you in Rome. But it didn't
seem fair, and I couldn't bring myself to do it."

His passionate voice was breaking; I thought my heart was breaking also.

"All I could do I did, but it came to nothing; and now you are here and
you are unhappy, and though it is so late I want to help you, to rescue
you, to drag you out of this horrible situation before I go away. Let me
do it. Give me the right of one you care enough for to allow him to
speak on your behalf."

I knew what that meant. I knew that I was tottering on the very edge of
a precipice, and to save myself I tried to think of Father Dan, of
Martin's mother, of my own mother, and since I could not speak I
struggled to pray.

"Don't say you can't. If you do I shall go away a sorrowful man. I shall
go at once too--to-night or to-morrow morning at latest, for my heart
bleeds to look at you and I can't stay here any longer to see you
suffer. It is not torture to me--it's hell!"

And then the irrepressible, overwhelming, inevitable moment came. Martin
laid hold of my right hand and said in his tremulous voice:

"Mary . . . Mary . . . I . . . I love you!"

I could hear no more. I could not think or pray or resist any longer.
The bitter struggle was at an end. Before I knew what I was doing I was
dropping my head on to his breast and he with a cry of joy was gathering
me in his arms.

I was his. He had taken his own. Nothing counted in the presence of our
love. To be only we two together--that was everything. The world and the
world's laws, the Church and the Canons of the Church were blotted out,
forgotten, lost.

For some moments I hardly breathed. I was only conscious that over my
head Martin was saying something that seemed to come to me with all the
deep and wonderful whispers of his heart.

"Then it's true! It's true that you love me! Yes, it's true! It's tru