what she's done, you mean? I don't. You ought to be gentle with
her, Papa. You drove her to it."

Rowcliffe answered.

"We'll not say what drove her, Gwenda."

"She was driven," she said.

"'Let no man say he is tempted of God when he is driven by his own
lusts and enticed,'" said the Vicar.

He had risen, and the movement brought him face to face with Gwenda.
And as she looked at him it was as if she saw vividly and for the
first time the profound unspirituality of her father's face. She knew
from what source his eyes drew their darkness. She understood the
meaning of the gross red mouth that showed itself in the fierce
lifting of the ascetic, grim moustache. And she conceived a horror of
his fatherhood.

"No man ought to say that of his own daughter. How does he know what's
her own and what's his?" she said.

Rowcliffe stared at her in a sort of awful admiration. She was
terrible; she was fierce; she was mad. But it was the fierceness and
the madness of pity and of compassion.

She went on.

"You've no business to be hard on her. You must have known."

"I knew nothing," said the Vicar.

He appealed to her with a helpless gesture of his hands.

"You did know. You were warned. You were told not to shut her up. And
you did shut her up. You can't blame her if she got away. You flung
her to Jim Greatorex. There wasn't anybody who cared for her but him."

"Cared for her!" He snarled his disgust.

"Yes. Cared for her. You think that's horrible of her--that she should
have gone to him--and yet you want to tie her to him when she's afraid
of him. And I think it's horrible of you."

"She must marry him." Mary spoke again. "She's brought it on herself,
Gwenda."

"She hasn't brought it on herself. And she shan't marry him."

"I'm afraid she'll have to," Rowcliffe said.

"She won't have to if I take her away somewhere and look after her. I
mean to do it. I'll work for her. I'll take care of the child."

"Oh, you--_you----!_" The Vicar waved her away with a frantic flapping
of his hands.

He turned to his son-in-law.

"Rowcliffe--I beg you--will you use your influence?"

"I have none."

That drew her. "Steven--help me--can't you see how terrible it is if
she's afraid of him?"

"But _is_ she?"

He looked at her with his miserable eyes, then turned them from her,
considering gravely what she had said. It was then, while Rowcliffe
was considering it, that the garden gate opened violently and fell to.