Then, as Cis bowed her head to each interrogation, Father Morley shook his head. “I am profoundly sorry for you, my daughter, but let us rejoice that the young man had left alive in him the decency not to deceive you. You are saved from a position which you would have assumed innocently, not knowing that the man was married, yet which would have been unfathomable wretchedness when you discovered the truth, that you were unmarried; only sheltered by the feeble arm of the state, which has no jurisdiction over the sacraments. My child, I hardly know whether to be more sorry for your present suffering, or more glad that you are saved from far, immeasurably far, worse torture.” “Father Morley, you don’t understand,” Cis protested. “You talk as if it were all off; it isn’t! I left Rodney after he told me, and I promised him to think it out, and tell him what I decided. I was shocked, horrified; I don’t mind owning that, but he is perfectly splendid. I love him, oh, I love him! He says we build up all these ideas; that it is ridiculous to torment ourselves with these laws of the Church. He says God is not so unjust; he says that we should be truly--and, oh, how happily!--married. He wants me to come out bravely and marry him in the mayor’s office, or somewhere, and be with him forever.” “You mean for years, when you say forever,” Father Morley reminded her, allowing no note of disturbance to creep into his voice. “‘Forever’ is precisely the wrong word there. In point of fact it would be strictly a temporal union; I doubt its outlasting to old age, but it would most certainly not be forever, eternal! You know, Miss Adair, that people easily drift into the habit of divorce. This man would not be bound to you by stronger bonds than his inclination. The marriage made in the mayor’s office can easily be set aside in one of the lower courts. The Church, you see, alone safeguards the woman. Wicked though this young man’s wife may be, probably is, still her marriage is safeguarded for her to repent within its walls. Her husband can repudiate her degradation, but he cannot replace her. You, if you went to live with him, pronounced his wife by a city official, would not be safeguarded at all, although you might not be the scorned woman that his wife is. Look you, Cicely Adair, you would not be better than she! With full knowledge you would reject your God and profane your own soul by the breaking of His law.” “Father Morley, do you mean that I--that I would be--would be--like her?” gasped Cis.