ll that before, and did not
believe any longer that God would punish me for breaking a bond I had
been forced to make. But when she was about to rise, saying that after
all it would be a good thing to send me home before I had time to join
my life to his--whoever he was--who had led me to forget my duty as a
wife, I held her trembling hands and whispered:

"Wait, Mildred. There is something I have not told you even yet."

"What is it?" she asked, but already I could see that she knew what I
was going to say.

"Mildred," I said, "if I ran away from my husband it was not merely
because I loved somebody else, but because. . . ."

I could not say it. Do what I would I could not. But holy women like
Mildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way of
reading a woman's heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read mine.

"Do you mean that . . . that there are consequences . . . going to be?"
she whispered.

"Yes."

"Does your husband know?"

"Yes."

"And your father?"

"No."

Mildred drew her hand away from me and crossed herself, saying beneath
her breath:

"Oh Mother of my God!"

I felt more humbled than I had ever been before, but after a while I
said:

"Now you see why I can never go back. And you will save me, will you
not?"

There was silence for some moments. Mildred had drawn back in her chair
as if an evil spirit had passed between us But at length she said:

"It is not for me to judge you, Mary. But the gentlemen will come up
soon to know if you are the Mary O'Neill whom I knew at the Sacred
Heart, and what am I to say to them?"

"Say no," I cried. "Why shouldn't you? They'll never know anything to
the contrary. Nobody will know."

"Nobody?"

I knew what Mildred meant, and in my shame and confusion I tried to
excuse myself by telling her who the other woman was.

"It is Alma," I said.

"Alma? Alma Lier?"

"Yes."

And then I told her how Alma had come back into my life, how she had
tortured and tempted me, and was now trying to persuade my husband, who
was a Protestant, to divorce me that she might take my place.

And then I spoke of Martin again--I could not help it--saying that the
shame which Alma would bring on him would be a greater grief to me than
anything else that could befall me in this world.

"If you only knew who he is," I said, "and the honour he is held in, you
would know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than that any
disgrace should fall on h