ly. First with love, which came to her like a whisper in a dream,
like the touch of an angel on her sleeping eyelids, so that when she
awoke to the laws of life the mysteries of sex did not startle or appal
her.

But sex in me had been awakened rudely and ruthlessly. Married without
love I had been suddenly confronted by the lower passion. What wonder
that I had found it brutal and barbarous?

"That's it, my child! That's it! I know! I know!"

Then he began to blame himself for everything, saying it was all his
fault and that he should have held out longer. When he saw how things
stood between me and my husband he should have said to my father, to the
Bishop, and to the lawyers, notwithstanding all their bargainings: "This
marriage must not go on. It will lead to disaster. It begins to end
badly."

"But now it is all over, my child, and there's no help for it."

I think the real strength of my resistance to Aunt Bridget's coarse
ridicule and the advocate's callous remonstrance must have been the
memory of my husband's threat when he talked about the possible
annulment of our marriage. The thought of that came back to me now, and
half afraid, half ashamed, with a fluttering of the heart, I tried to
mention it.

"Is there no way out?" I asked.

"What way can there be?" said Father Dan. "God knows I know what
pressure was put upon you; but you are married, you have made your vows,
you have given your promises. That's all the world sees or cares about,
and in the eyes of the law and the Church you are responsible for all
that has happened."

With my head still buried in Father Dan's cassock I got it out at last.

"But annulment! Isn't that possible--under the circumstances?" I asked.

The good old priest seemed to be too confused to speak for a moment.
Then he explained that what I hoped for was quite out of the question.

"I don't say that in the history of the Church marriages have not been
annulled on equally uncertain grounds, but in this case the civil law
would require proof--something to justify nullity. Failing that there
would have to be collusion either on one side or both, and that is not
possible--not to you, my child, not to the daughter of your mother, that
dear saint who suffered so long and was silent."

More than ever now I felt like a ship-broken man with the last plank
sinking under him. The cold mysterious dread of my husband was creeping
back, and the future of my life with him stood befor