"The same religion!" he said, with an energy that almost made Sarella jump. "The Catholic Church and heresy all one religion! Black and white the same color!" Sarella was now convinced that he and his wife had fought on the subject. On such matters she was quite resolved there should be no fighting in her case; concerning expenditure it might be _necessary_ to fight. But Sarella was an easy person who had no love for needless warfare, and she made up her mind at once. "I understand, now you put it that way," she said amiably, "you're right again. Both can't be right, and the husband is the head of the wife." Don Joaquin accepted _this_ theory whole-heartedly, and nodded approvingly. "How," he said, "can a Protestant mother bring up her Catholic son?" Sarella laughed inwardly. So he had quite arranged the sex of his future family. "But," she said with a remarkably swift riposte, "if Catholics should not marry Protestants, they have no business to make love to them. Have they?" Her Catholic admirer looked a little silly, and she swore to herself that he was blushing. "Because," she continued, entirely without blushing, "a Catholic gentleman made love to _me_ once--" "Perhaps," suggested Don Joaquin, recovering himself "he hoped you would become a Catholic, if you accepted him." "I daresay," Sarella agreed very cheerfully. "But you evidently did not accept him." "As to that," she explained frankly, "he did not go quite so far as asking me to marry him." "He drew back!" "Not exactly. He was interrupted." "But didn't he resume the subject?" Sarella laughed. "I'd rather not answer that question," she answered; "you're asking quite a few questions, aren't you?" "I want to ask another. Did you like that Catholic gentleman well enough to share all he had, his religion, his name, and his home?" Don Joaquin was not laughing, on the contrary, he was eagerly serious, and Sarella laughed no more. "He never did ask me to share them," she replied with a self-possession that her elderly lover admired greatly. "But he does. He is asking you. Sarella, will you share my religion, and my name, my home, and all that I have?" Even now she was amused inwardly, not all caused by love. She noted, and was entertained by noting, how he put first among things she was to share, his religion--because he was not so sure of her willingness to share that as of her readiness to share his name and his goods, and meant to be sure, as she now quite understood. It did not make her respect him less. She had the sense to know that he would not make a worse husband for caring enough for his religion to make a condition of it, and she was grateful for the form in which he put the condition. He spared her the brutality of, "I will marry you if you will turn Catholic to marry me, but I won't if you refuse to do that."