"Think of your ministry, my boy," urged the old man, "of the sacred duties of your office. Your attitude towards this woman has been, in every way, just what the people expect the conduct of a man to be toward the one he is seeking to make his wife. Yet no one for a moment thinks you expect to marry this woman, who is known to be an alien to the church. What success could you hope to have as a minister if you take to wife one who would have nothing to do with your church? What right have you, then, to be so intimate with her, to seek her company so constantly? Granting all that you say of her character, and all that Dr. Miles has written, why does she stay in Corinth, where no one will employ her, when she could so easily return to her work in the city, taking that Conner girl with her?" Dan could find no words to answer the Elder. He was stunned by the situation to which he had been so suddenly awakened by the old man's plain words. But there were elements in the problem unknown to Nathaniel Jordan, though the old man felt that somehow his lance had gone deeper than he intended. When the Elder was gone Dan's mind and heart clutched those words, "No one believes for a moment that you expect to marry this woman." "To marry this woman--to marry--to marry!" He thought of his father and mother, and their perfect companionship. "What right have you in this case, to be so intimate with her, to seek her company so constantly?" He started to go to the window that looks down on the garden, thinking to see her there, but checked himself. He knew now why the garden had grown to mean so much to him. He tried to realize what his life would be without this woman who had so grown into it. Dan Matthews was no weakling who could amuse himself with a hundred imitation love affairs. In his veins ran the fierce, red blood of a strong race that had ruled by the simple strength of manhood their half-wild mountain wilderness. As the tiny stream, flowing quietly through peaceful meadow, still woodland, and sunny pasture--growing always broader and deeper as it runs--is unconscious of its quiet power until checked by some barrier, and rising, swelling to a mighty flood--seeks to clear its path; so Dan's love had grown. In the fields of friendship it had gained always depth and power until now--coming to the barrier--it rose in all its strength--a flood of passion that shook every nerve and fibre of the man's being, a mighty force that would not be denied. Going to the other window he saw the cast-iron monument. And as he looked at the figure so immovable, so hideously rigid and fixed in the act of proclaiming an issue that belonged to a dead age, he felt as if his heart would burst with wild rage at the whole community, people and church. "What right had he to the companionship of this woman?"