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You wish to leave your husband, don't you?"
"I . . . I must."
"And you want to go to this . . . this young . . . in short, you want to
go to Martin Conrad? That's the plain truth, isn't it? Don't deny it.
Very well, let us call things by their proper names. What is the fact?
You are asking me--me, your spiritual Father--to allow you to live a
life of open adultery. That's what it comes to. You know it is, and God
and His holy Mother have mercy on your soul!"
I was so startled and shocked by his fierce assault, and by the cruel
climax it had come to, that I flung up my hands to my face and kept them
there, for I felt as if my brain had been stunned and my heart was
bursting.
How long I sat like this, with my hidden face to the fire, I do not
know; but after a long silence in which I heard nothing but my own
heaving breath, I became aware that Father Dan had drawn one of my hands
down to his knee and was smoothing it with his own.
"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the truth," he
said.


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