"Heaven knows, Mrs. Satterthwaite, there are times when to a poor priest the rule of the Church as regards marriage seems bitter hard and he almost doubts her inscrutable wisdom. He doesn't mind you. But at times I wish that that young man would take what advantage--it's all there is!--that he can of being a Protestant and divorce Sylvia. For I tell you, there are bitter things to see amongst my flock over there . . ." He made a vague gesture towards the infinite. . . . "And bitter things I've seen, for the heart of man is a wicked place. But never a bitterer than this young man's lot." "As you say," Mrs. Satterthwaite said, "my husband was a good man. I hated him, but that was as much my fault as his. More! And the only reason I don't wish Christopher to divorce Sylvia is that it would bring disgrace on my husband's name. At the same time, Father . . ." The priest said: "I've heard near enough." "There's this to be said for Sylvia," Mrs. Satterthwaite went on. "There are times when a woman hates a man--as Sylvia hates her husband. . . . I tell you I've walked behind a man's back and nearly screamed because of the desire to put my nails into the veins of his neck. It was a fascination. And it's worse with Sylvia. It's a natural antipathy." "Woman!" Father Consett fulminated, "I've no patience wid ye! If the woman, as the Church directs, would have children by her husband and live decent, she would have no such feelings. It's unnatural living and unnatural practises that cause these complexes. Don't think I'm an ignoramus, priest if I am." Mrs. Satterthwaite said: "But Sylvia's had a child." Father Consett swung round like a man that has been shot at. "Whose?" he asked, and he pointed a dirty finger at his interlocutress. "It was that blackguard Drake's, wasn't it? I've long suspected that." "It was probably Drake's," Mrs. Satterthwaite said. "Then," the priest said, "in the face of the pains of the hereafter how could you let that decent lad in the hotness of his sin? . . ." "Indeed," Mrs. Satterthwaite said, "I shiver sometimes when I think of it. Don't believe that I had anything to do with trepanning him. But I couldn't hinder it. Sylvia's my daughter, and dog doesn't eat dog." "There are times when it should," Father Consett said contemptuously. "You don't seriously," Mrs. Satterthwaite said, "say that I, a mother, if an indifferent one, with my daughter appearing in trouble, as the kitchenmaids say, by a married man--that I should step in and stop a marriage that was a Godsend. . . ."