Yet, had it not been for that specter, it is more than possible that the puisne judge would have relented toward his "erring daughter." Under certain circumstances he might even have helped her to secure her freedom. For although Aliette had outraged both his legal sense and his sense of propriety; although she had admittedly broken the oath sworn at a Protestant altar; yet the lapse of the years had so softened Andrew's Protestantism, left it so broadly tolerant, so much more of an ideal than a religion, that he considered, as many latter-day Protestants do consider, almost every tenet of his church open to the argument of the individual case. The judge, moreover, was instinctively aware that Aliette's relations to Hector might furnish exactly that individual case necessary for her justification. But in view of his wife's obvious misery, Andrew felt himself incapable of forgiveness. To Marie Fullerford--and this her husband realized--from that very first moment when she opened Aliette's letter of confession, it had seemed as though the Roman Catholic Church, the church from whose rigid discipline she had revolted to marry Andrew, were taking its revenge for the long-ago apostasy. After one heartbroken conversation with her husband, she withdrew into contemplation. Hour after hour she used to sit in her own little room, remembering and regretting the faith of her childhood. Marie could no more go back to that faith! The Church, the surely-disciplined authoritative Church of Rome, would have none of her. And she would have given so much in her present distress for the comfort of Rome! The spiritual uncertainty of Protestantism frightened her with its easy-going tolerance. She saw the doctrine of the English Church as a broad-pathed quagmire, through which one trod with individual and uncertain steps toward an individual and uncertain heaven; while Roman Catholicism, knowing neither tolerance nor uncertainty, indicated the only road, the safe and the narrow road to constitutional bliss. Constantly Marie Fullerford tried to recall her old courage, the individual fortitude which had broken her loose from Roman Catholicism. But the old fortitude would not return. She yearned in her weakness for the guidance of the priest, for the infallible laws, for the infallible dogmas of an infallible hierarchy. Her spiritual knees ached, and the hard hassock of Protestantism could not rest them. Stumbling, she desired to cast the heavy pack of her doubts at the feet of a father-confessor--of a father-confessor who would give one orders, definite commands: "Let your daughter sin no more. Let her return to her husband, expiate her offenses." No doubting there! No leaving of the individual case to individual judgment!