Then he continued, with recovered serenity:
"As for repenting! Do you suppose that he, your son, ever dreams of repenting?"
It hurt her to hear the boy talk like that. She longed to be able to tell him something of her trouble, to warn him for the future, yet at the same time she rejoiced at his words, as though the conscience of the innocent lad were speaking to her conscience to commend and encourage it.
"Does he, does my Paul say it is right for priests not to marry?" she asked in a low voice.
"If he does not say it is right, who should say so? Of course he says it is right; hasn't he said so to you? A fine thing it would be to see a priest with his wife beside him and a child in his arms! And when he ought to go and say Mass he has to nurse the baby because it's howling! What a joke! Imagine your son with one child in his arms and another hanging on to his cassock!"
The mother smiled wanly; but there passed before her eyes a fleeting vision of lovely children running about the house, and there
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