"It was a legal marriage, and marriage is a holy thing."
He spoke with the finality of the Vicar's churchwarden--as if he were withstanding the onslaught of a professed freethinker. His last statement was, however, too much for the patience of his daughter--to be more exact, it was too much for her mask of humility which she had put on to save the trouble of discussion with him.
She turned upon him, speaking with a definiteness and finality quite equal in force to his display of the same qualities.
"Look here, father," she said. "We may as well understand each other at once. You know as well as I do that there was nothing sacred about that marriage of mine. You know that the--the--no, I will not give him his true name, I will call him for once a man--he behaved like a man--_once_--you know, I say, that he married me simply because that foolish woman, Aunt Emily, gave him to understand that you would endow me handsomely on my wedding day, and he wanted the money to pay back all that he had embezzled. You also know that I never had the least feeling of affection, or even of regard, for the man--that I only agreed to marry him because my mother forced me to do so."
"Do not speak a word against your mother, girl."
"I am not speaking against her. She, I am sure, was convinced that she was urging me to take a step for my own good; she had always bowed down before the superior judgment of Aunt Emily. No matter about that; I married the man caring nothing for him, but believing that he cared something for me. It was proved at the church door that he never cared a scrap for me. That is the marriage which you tell me was sacred!"
"Marriage is a sacred ordinance. You can't get over that; and every marriage celebrated in the church----"
"Sacred ordinance! You might as well talk of any Stock Exchange transaction being sacred because it is made in what I believe they call the House. Sacred! A sacred farce! I remember feeling when I was in the church that day how dreadful was the mockery of the whole thing--how the curate talked about the mystic union between Christ and the Church being symbolized by marriage--dreadful!... Never mind, what you know as well as I know is that that marriage of mine was not made by God, but by the Power of Evil; it was the severance of that marriage that came from God, and the coming of it so quickly makes me feel such gratitude to God as I cannot express in words. That is all I have to say just now; only if you fancy that I shall be hypocrite enough to pretend that I am mourning for that man who did his best to wreck my life, you are mistaken. You know that all rightminded people will say 'What a happy release for the poor girl!' and they will be right. It is exactly what the poor girl herself is saying, and what the father of the poor girl is saying in his heart, however he may talk about the sacredness of marriage."