John half smiled, but did not answer. The room had grown dark as they talked, and now Alfaretta brought a lamp, looking curiously at the rector, as she passed him. "Supper's ready, Mr. Ward," she said. "Yes," John said. "Dr. Howe, I hope"-- But the rector plunged again into argument. Once he stopped, and said, "So, surely, she can return?" "It is impossible," John answered quietly. And again, "You will let me send her back?" And he said, "No." At last, wearied and baffled, Dr. Howe rose. He leaned heavily forward on the table, his open palm resting on the volume of sermons, which Alfaretta had lifted from the floor, and he looked steadily at John. "Then, sir," he said slowly, "I am to understand, for my niece, that this monstrous decision of yours is fixed and unchangeable? We cannot hope that her love, or her youth, or your duty, or the miserable scandal of the affair, will ever move your cruel determination?" John rose, too. The interview had been a terrible strain. His courage was unshaken, but his strength was leaving him; a pathetic desire for sympathy and understanding seized him. "I love her too much to change. Don't you understand? But I cling to more than human strength, when I say, I will not change." "Then, by Heaven," cried the rector, "neither shall she! With my consent she shall never return to a man who reads such books as those," and he pointed to the row of Edwards,--"a man who denies good in anything outside his own miserable conception of religion; the very existence of whose faith is a denunciation and execration of every one who does not agree with him. You are firm, sir? So is she! I bid you good-day." He turned to the door, breathing hard through his shut teeth. John Ward followed him, and laid his hand upon his arm. "Do not go," he said; "there is much I would like to say; and you will spend the night here with me? I beg that you will not go." "The roof which refuses to shelter my niece," answered Dr. Howe, his voice shaking with anger, "shall not be over my head!" "Then," said John slowly and gently, "you must listen now to what I have to say." "Must!" cried the rector. "Yes, for it is your duty to listen, as it is mine to speak. I dare not hear a servant of God set the opinion of the world above a conception of duty--no matter how strained and unnatural the duty may appear to him--and keep silence. I cannot listen when you urge Helen's temporal happiness, and refuse to consider her eternal welfare, and not tell you you are wrong. You evade the truth; you seek ease in Zion. I charge you, by the sacred name of Him whose minister you are, that you examine your own soul." Dr. Howe looked at him, his face crimson with anger. "Sir," he stammered, flinging the detaining hand from his arm,--"sir!" And then, for the first time since Archibald Howe took orders, an oath burst from his lips; he struck his stick madly against the table, and rushed from the room.