'That was enough.' 'You are wrong,' answered Monsignor Saracinesca gently.

'The Church will do nothing that the law would not do, and the law would not release Sister Giovanna, or any one else, from a legal obligation taken under the same circumstances as the religious one she has assumed.' 'What do you mean ?' 'This.

If, instead of becoming a nun, Angela had married another man after you were lost, Italian law would not annul the marriage in order that she might become your wife.' 'Of course not!' 'Then why should the Church annul an obligation which is quite as solemn as marriage ?' Giovanni thought he had caught the churchman in a fallacy.
'I beg your pardon,' he replied.

'I was taught as a boy that marriage is a sacrament, but I never heard that taking the veil was one!' 'Quite right, in principle.

In reality, it is considered, for women, the equivalent of ordination, and therefore as being of the nature of a sacrament.' 'I am not a theologian, to discuss equivalents,' retorted Giovanni roughly.
'Very true, but a man who knows nothing of mathematics may safely accept the statement of a mathematician about a simple problem.