“Defend them, Asher? I am not defending them.”
“Paralysed brains, arrested intelligences.” He stopped, choked, unable to articulate for his haste. “That brute, Monsignor Mostyn— at all events I can see him, and kick the vile brute.” And taken in another gust of passion, Owen went towards the door. “Yes, I can have it out with him.”
“But, Asher, he is an old man; to lay hands upon him would be ruin.”
“What do I care about ruin? I am ruined. They have got her, and her mind will be poisoned. She will get the abominable ascetic mind. The pleasure of the flesh transferred! What is legitimate and beautiful in the body put into the mind, the mind sullied by passions that do not belong to the mind. That is what papistry is! They will poison that pure, beautiful woman’s mind. That priest has put
