“I mean exactly what I say,” he answered, with the same dreadful quietness. That which had not seemed possible to him last night, that she would really choose as she had chosen, had become more than possible. “You choose between us. Are there words in which I can make that clearer? If you choose me, you say good-bye to Lord Yorkshire here and now. If you choose him, you are to understand that you cease to be my daughter. I will not be at your wedding; I will not see you afterwards. You shall not be married from this house, nor, if I could help it, should you be married in this church.” Then suddenly the quietness of the scene was shattered. As if by a sudden flash of lightning, all that Helen’s choice implied, her rejection not of him alone, but her rejection of all in the world that he held sacred, was made dazzlingly clear to him. At that his self-control gave way, and as his voice rose louder and louder, he beat with his clenched hand on the edge of the marble chimney-piece, so that the knuckles bled. “Understand what you are doing,” he said, “and let me tell you, so that there can be no mistake. You will promise to love, honour, and obey an atheist, an infidel, one who denies God and his Christ. You will have to say you do this according to God’s holy ordinance. That from you, in church, Helen, and a lie. It cannot be by His ordinance, for by your act you turn your back on the faith that has been yours from childhood till now, on all you have believed to be sacred. And what of the end? What of the life to which this is but a prelude? What of him, your husband, then? He that believeth not shall be damned. I would--I would sooner see you in your coffin than standing by the altar with this man. I would sooner see you his mistress----“ His passion, springing though it did from his own intense and fervent Christianity, had suddenly shot out into a bitter and poisonous blossom, and as that flared through the room, he paused a moment and looked at her as she stood before him in the beautiful whiteness of her girlhood. Her physical weakness had altogether passed, and except that she took one step back from him in involuntary disgust and shrinking, you would have said she was listening with quiet, incredulous wonder to some tale that did not concern her. But as he paused, hardly yet knowing what he had said, knowing, in fact, only that no words could be strong enough to express the intensity of his conviction, she turned from him. “Come, Frank,” she said; “let us go.” Frank also had risen with a sudden flush on his face at those intolerable words, an answer springing to his lips, and moved quickly towards her with some instinct of protecting her. But her tone checked him, and he followed her to the door. She had already opened it, without further speech or looking back, when her father’s voice, scarcely audible and broken and trembling, stopped her.