“Helen,” he said, “indeed I did not think or know what I said. But, my dearest, what are you doing? What are you doing? For Christ’s sake, Helen, who died for you.” Frank had passed out. Whatever more took place between them was not for him to hear. Then the door closed behind him, leaving father and daughter alone. “For Christ’s sake, Helen,” he said again. She came back to the hearth-rug where he stood. “Oh, father,” she said, and paused. That was all the reproach he was ever to hear from her. “You are making it very hard for me.” “Yes, I am making it as hard as I can. I am bound by my duty to God to do that. If I knew how to make it harder, I would.” “You cannot. You have said all that can be said. And I have nothing more to say. Let me go now.” She kissed him gently. “Poor father!” she said, and left him. * * * * * Mr. Challoner stood long where he was when she had gone. Never before perhaps in his whole life had another will come so actively and stubbornly into collision with his, and never before certainly had he felt so overwhelmingly a sense of spiritual desolation. Eager and strenuous all through, it was in the truths of the Christian faith that he found the incentive of his life, from it sprang all the earnestness and deep sense of duty in the man, to it was every effort and deed of his dedicated. “But what have I done,” he half moaned to himself, “that this should come to my house, and to one for whose faith and upbringing I have to answer? Oh, Lord, if it is through any fault of mine, let me learn for what deadly sin this punishment is sent!” Indeed, he had spoken no more than the truth, bitter and brutal though the truth was, when he told Helen that he would rather have seen her in her coffin than by the altar with her lover. And now he took no account of his personal sorrow; the yearning that she should accept her father’s wish and guidance as such was non-existent in him, killed by the stronger motive. All his personal relations with her of trust and affection, which to the best of his power he had built up for years, were voiceless now,--simply he strove for a soul--and that dear to him--in danger imminent and awful. The rigid Puritan note was here, and he would sooner have mated her with a thief or an adulterer, since such might repent and be saved, than with a reasoned atheist.