At the edge of the bluff, just where the pines and the bayberry bushes were thickest, where the narrow, crooked little footpath dipped over the rise and down to the pasture land and the salt meadow, John Ellery and Grace had halted in their walk. It was full tide and the miniature breakers plashed amid the seaweed on the beach. The mist was drifting in over the bay and the gulls were calling sleepily from their perch along the breakwater. A night hawk swooped and circled above the tall “feather grass” by the margin of the creek. The minister's face was pale, but set and determined, and he was speaking rapidly. “I can't help it,” he said. “I can't help it. I have made up my mind and nothing can change it, nothing but you. It rests with you. If you say yes, then nothing else matters. Will you say it?” He was holding both her hands now, and though she tried to withdraw them, he would not let her. “Will you?” he pleaded. “I can't,” she answered brokenly. “I can't. Think of your church and of your people. What would they say if--” “I don't care what they say.” “Oh! yes, you do. Not now, perhaps, but later you will. You don't know Trumet as I know it. No, it's impossible.” “I tell you there is only one impossible thing. That is that I give you up. I won't do it. I CAN'T do it! Grace, this is life and death for me. My church--” He paused in spite of himself. His church, his first church! He had accepted the call with pride and a determination to do his best, the very best that was in him, for the society and for the people whom he was to lead. Some of those people he had learned to love; many of them, he felt sure, loved him. His success, his popularity, the growth of the organization and the praise which had come to him because of it, all these had meant, and still meant, very much to him. No wonder he paused, but the pause was momentary. “My church,” he went on, “is my work and I like it. I believe I've done some good here and I hope to do more. But no church shall say whom I shall marry. If you care for me, Grace, as I think and hope you do, we'll face the church and the town together, and they will respect us for it.” She shook her head. “Some of them might respect you,” she said. “They would say you had been led into this by me and were not so much to blame. But I--” “They shall respect my wife,” he interrupted, snapping his teeth together, “or I'll know the reason why.” She smiled mournfully. “I think they'll tell you the reason,” she answered. “No, John, no! we mustn't think of it. You can see we mustn't. This has all been a mistake, a dreadful mistake, and I am to blame for it.”