The Reverend Osney Possnett felt that he was now being subjected to a greater trial of patience than he could bear. Here was this young woman, the daughter of his own churchwarden, facing him and turning and twisting his words to suit her own pernicious views! He could almost fancy that she was mocking him. He could scarcely believe that such a trial should be included among those of celestial origin. “Priscilla, I, your priest, tell you that you are living in sin with this man who is not your husband, and I command you to forsake this life and to forsake that man who, I doubt not, has tempted you by the allurements of a higher position in life than that for which you were intended by God, to be false to your Church, false to the teaching of its priest, false to your own better nature. Leave him, Priscilla; leave him before it is too late!” Again she laughed; but this time it was with a different expression. “I cannot say ‘_Retro me?_ because I am not resisting any temptation,” she said. “You have shown that you do not understand in the least how I feel in regard to my position--you could not possibly understand me if I were to refer to the church in which you preach as a house of sin.” “Priscilla, for God’s sake, pause--pause----” “I have not called it a house of sin; God forbid that I should be so foolish! but it was made the means of my committing the greatest sin of my life--the abandonment of myself--myself--at the bidding of my parents. All that has happened since, you have assured me as a delegate, is to be part of a great trial sent for the purification of my heart, my soul, whatever you please. Well, I told you that I accepted that view and that I hoped I should come away from it purified and strengthened. But I cannot get away altogether from the thought that perhaps it may be a judgment on myself for being untrue to myself when I entered your church at the bidding of my father and my mother to say words that I knew to be false--that they knew to be false--to make promises that I knew it would be a crime to keep.” “I care nothing about that, Priscilla. All that concerns me is that you were joined to a man according to the rites of the Holy Church, and that, he being still alive you are now wife to him and to no other.” “And you would have me now go to him and live with him as his wife according to God’s holy ordinance, and to keep those promises which I made in your church?” “I solemnly affirm that such is your duty.” “You say that, knowing the man, and knowing that he is a criminal--that he married me to save himself from the consequences of his crime--you can tell me that I should worship him with my body, that I should love, honour, and obey him till death us do part? Knowing that I have never had any love for him, you tell me that my place is by his side?”