She told me a bit about Fee, but she didn't say who the father was, and I didn't like to ask. Anyway, she made me promise to be good to Fee she knew they'd have Fee off the place the minute she was dead, so she had suggested to James that they find Fee a husband. I felt sorry for the poor old thing; she was terribly fond of Fee.

"Would you believe, Father, that the first time I was ever close enough to Fee to say hello to her was the day I married her?" "Oh, I'd believe it," the priest said under his breath. He looked at the liquid in his glass, then drained it and reached for the bottle, filling both glasses. "So you married a lady far above you, Paddy."

"Yes. I was frightened to death of her at first. She was so beautiful in those days, Father, and so . . . out of it, if you know what I mean. As if she wasn't even there, as if it was all happening to someone else." "She's still beautiful, Paddy," said Father Ralph gently. "I can see in Meggie what she must have been like before she began to age."

"It hasn't been an easy life for her, Father, but I don't know what else I could have done. At least with me she was safe, and not abused. It took me two years to get up the courage to be-well, a real husband to her. I had to teach her to cook, to sweep a floor, wash and iron clothes. She didn't know how.

"And never once in all the years we've been married, Father, has she ever complained, or laughed, or cried. It's only in the most private part of our life together that she ever displays any feeling, and even then she never speaks. I hope she will, yet I don't want her to, because I always have the idea if she did, it would be his name she'd say. Oh, I don't mean she doesn't like me, or our children. But I love her so much, and it just seems to me she hasn't got that sort of feeling left in her. Except for Frank. I've always known she loved Frank more than the rest of us put together. She must have loved his father. But I don't know a thing about the man, who he was, why she couldn't marry him."

Father Ralph looked down at his hands, blinking.

"Oh, Paddy, what hell it is to be alive! Thank God I haven't the courage to try more than the fringe of it."

Paddy got up, rather unsteadily. "Well, I've done it now, Father, haven't I?