The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 158: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

What Shall She Do? 151 ured the love of that country school ma’am as sacredly then as it did ten years before. And the little woman? He returned, believing that she had forgotten and had learned to love another. He heard that she had gone West and had married, and he took this means of finding her, or at least letting her hear from him. He confessed to me that night that he had secretly hoped to find the report of her marriage untrue. And now he had found her, and she loved him. But she was a wife. The wife of a man she had never loved, and the old love was tugging at her heart. What were they to do? That was the question he put to me that night. I went to a Catholic priest and laid the story before him, omit- ting the later developments since the lover’s return. His answer came clear and decidedly. ‘Marriage is a sacrament, not a legal contract, and if she did not love her husband the sacrament was void.” “What shall she do?” ‘Renew her vows privately, or leave her husband.” “But she does not now love her husband! Shall she secure a divorce and marry her lover?” “NO.” Such was the decree of the church. I gave it to the lover. To him and to you I leave it. “What shall she do?” CONNIE OOOKS (SO)