"But savages, to whom the Scriptures are unknown, have a sense of right and wrong. Those who lived before the birth of Christ--the Greeks and Romans--had a sense of right and wrong." Knowing that the priest's absolution depended upon her acceptance of the doctrine of a future life, she strove to believe as a little child. But it was her sins of the flesh that she wanted to confess, and this argument about the Incarnation had begun to seem out of place. Suddenly it seemed to hear inexpressibly ludicrous that she should be kneeling beside the priest. She could not help wondering what Owen would think of her. She remembered his pointing out that it is stated in the Gospel that the Messiah should be descended from David. Now, Mary was not of royal blood, so it was through Joseph, who was not his father, that Christ was descended from David. But these discrepancies did not matter. She felt the Church to be necessary to her, and that its teaching coincided with her deepest feeling seemed to her enough. But Monsignor was insistent, and he pressed dogma after dogma upon her. All the while the cocoa-nut matting ate into her knees, and she was perplexed by remembrances of sexual abandonments. How to speak of them she did not know, and she was haunted and terrified by the idea of concealing anything which would invalidate her confession. So she hastily availed herself of the first pause to tell him that she had lived with Owen Asher for the last six years. The priest did not trouble to inquire further, and she felt that she could not leave him under the impression that she had lived with Owen the moderate, sexual life which she believed was maintained between husband and wife. "My life during the last six years," she said, interrupting him, "has been so abandoned. There are few--there are no excesses of which I have not been guilty." "You have said enough on that point," he answered, to her great relief. But at that moment she remembered Ulick, and she felt that she must mention him. To do so she had again to interrupt the priest. "But I must tell you--Sir Owen was not the only one"--she bowed her head--"there was another." Then, yielding to the temptation to explain herself, she told Monsignor how it was this second sin that had awakened her conscience. She had tried to look upon Sir Owen as her husband. "But one night at the theatre, during a performance of 'Tristan and Isolde,' I sinned with this second man."