Ned, and the boy is doing very well."

"So you said in your letters. But after posting my letter I said to
myself: if it causes me trouble, how much more will it cause her?"

"Your letter did trouble me, Ned. I was feeling very weak that morning
and the baby was crying for me, for I had been nursing him for a week.
I did not know what to do. I was torn both ways, so I sent up a note to
Father Brennan asking him to come to see me, and he came down and told
me that I was quite free to give my baby to a foster-mother."

"But what does Father Brennan know about it more than anyone of us?"

"The sanction of the Church, Ned--"

"The sanction of the Church! What childish nonsense is this?" he said.
"The authority of a priest. So it was not for me, but because a
priest--"

"But, Ned, there must be a code of morality, and these men devote their
lives to thinking out one for us."

He could see that she was looking more charming than she had ever
looked before, but her beauty could not crush the anger out of him; and
she never seemed further from him, not even when the Atlantic divided
them.

"Those men devote their lives to thinking out a code of morality for
us! You submit your soul to their keeping. And what remains of you when
you have given over your soul?"

"But, Ned, why this outbreak? You knew I was a Catholic when you
married me."

"Yes, ... of course, and I'm sorry, Ellen, for losing my temper. But it
is only in Ireland that women submit themselves body and soul. It is
extraordinary; it is beyond human reason."

They walked on in silence, and Ned tried to forget that his wife was a
Catholic. Her religion did not prevent her from wearing a white dress
and a hat with roses in it.

"Shall I go up-stairs to see the baby, or will you bring him down?"

"I'll bring him down."

And it was a great lump of white flesh with blue eyes and a little red
down on its head that she carried in her arms.

"And now, Ned, forget the priest and admire your boy."

"He seems a beautiful boy, so healthy and sleepy."

"I took him out of his bed, but he never cries. Nurse said she never
heard of a baby that did not cry. Do you know I'm sometimes tempted to
pinch him to see if he can cry."

She sat absorbed looking at the baby; and she was so beautiful and so
intensely real at that moment that Ned began to forget that she had
given the child out to nurse because the priest had told her that she
might do so without sin.

"I