"Poor fellow!" said the young man, deeply moved, "poor Ward! It is worse for him than it is for Helen." "Oh, how can you say so?" she cried; "but I'm sure I hope it is!" "He won't weaken," Gifford went on slowly. "He will stand like a rock for what he believes is right, and he will be more apt to believe it is right if it nearly kills him." "I wish it would! And Helen, poor darling, thinks he loves her. What sort of love does he call this?" "Oh, it is love," Gifford answered; "and I tell you, Lois, it is a height of love that is ideal,--it is the measure of Ward's soul." They were both so much in earnest, there was not the slightest self-consciousness in this talk of love, even though Gifford added, "I never knew a man capable of such devotion, and there are few women like Helen, who could inspire it." "But, Giff," Lois said, not caring to discuss John Ward's character, "did you suppose anybody could be so narrow? Think how bigoted he is! And nobody believes in hell now as he does." "I don't know about that, Lois," Gifford responded slowly. "Lots of people do, only they don't live up to their belief. If the people who say they believe in hell were in dead earnest, the world would have been converted long ago." "He is a wicked man!" Lois cried inconsequently. But Gifford shook his head. "No, he is not. And more than that, Lois, you ought to consider that this belief of Ward's, if it is crude, is the husk which has kept safe the germ of truth,--the consequences of sin are eternal. There is no escape from character." "Oh, yes," she answered, "but that is not theology, you know: we don't put God into that." "Heaven help us if we do not!" the young man said reverently. "It is all God, Lois; perhaps not God as John Ward thinks of Him, a sort of magnified man, for whom he has to arrange a scheme of salvation, a kind of an apology for the Deity, but the power and the desire for good in ourselves. That seems to me to be God. Sometimes I feel as though all our lives were a thought of the Eternal, which would have as clear an expression as we would let it." Lois had not followed his words, and said impatiently as he finished, "Well, anyhow, he is cruel, and Helen should not have felt as she did when I said so." Gifford hesitated. "She could not help it. How could she let you say it?" "What!" cried Lois, "you think he's not cruel?" "His will is not cruel," Gifford answered, "but I meant--I meant--she couldn't let you speak as you did of John Ward, to his wife." Lois flung her head back. "You think I said too much?" she asked. "You don't half sympathize with her, Gifford. I didn't think you could be so hard." "I mean it was not quite kind in you," he said slowly. "I suppose you think it wasn't right?" "No, Lois, it was not right," he answered, with a troubled face.