pression which it had worn when he looked back at
me from the door.

At yet another moment I thought I heard him calling me.

"Mary!"

I listened again, but again all was still, and when I told myself that
if in actual fact he had spoken my name it was perhaps only to himself
(as I was speaking his) my heart throbbed up to my throat.

Once more I heard his voice.

"Mary!"

I could bear no more. Martin wanted me. I must go to him. Though body
and soul were torn asunder I must go.

Before I knew what I was doing I had opened the door and was walking
across the corridor in the direction of Martin's room.

The house was dark. Everybody had gone to bed. Light as my footsteps
were, the landing was creaking under me. I knew that the floors of the
grim old Castle sometimes made noises when nobody walked on them, but
none the less I felt afraid.

Half way to Martin's door I stopped. A ghostly hand seemed to be laid
on my shoulder and a ghostly voice seemed to say in my ear:

"Wait! Reflect! If you do what you are thinking of doing what will
happen? You will become an outcast. The whole body of your own sex will
turn against you. You will be a bad woman."

I knew what it was. It was my conscience speaking to me in the voice of
my Church--my Church, the mighty, irresistible power that was separating
me from Martin. I was its child, born in its bosom, but if I broke its
laws it would roll over me like a relentless Juggernaut.

It was not at first that I could understand why the Church should set
itself up against my Womanhood. My Womanhood was crying out for life and
love and liberty. But the Church, in its inexorable, relentless voice,
was saying, "Thou Shalt Not!"

After a moment of impenetrable darkness, within and without, I thought I
saw things more plainly. The Church was the soul of the world. It stood
for purity, which alone could hold the human family together. If all
women who had made unhappy marriages were to do as I was thinking of
doing (no matter under what temptation) the world would fall to wreck
and ruin.

Feeling crushed and ashamed, and oh, so little and weak, I groped my way
back to the boudoir and closed the door.

Then a strange thing happened--one of those little accidents of life
which seem to be thrown off by the mighty hand of Fate. A shaft of light
from my bedroom, crossing the end of my writing-desk, showed me a copy
of a little insular newspaper.

The paper, which must have come by