But something held him back.

The old, narrow creed in which he had been reared, whose shackles he had broken through when he had recklessly followed the bidding of his heart and married Diane, was once more mastering him--bidding him resist the natural human impulses of love and kindliness evoked by his wife's appeal.
_"God Himself has taken your punishment into His own Hands."_ Again he seemed to hear Catherine's accusing tones, and the fanatical strain inbred in him answered like a boat to its helm.

There must be no more compromise, no longer any evasion of the issues of right and wrong.
He had sinned, and both he and the woman for whose sake he had defied his own creed, and that of his fathers before him, must make atonement.
He drew himself up, and stood stiff and unbending beside the bed.

In his light-grey eyes there shone that same indomitable ardour of the zealot which had shone in Catherine's.
"No," he said.

"I am not angry that the child is a girl.