"Certainly, as openly as I have told you. Surely if I showed no reserve toward you by your personal request and as a matter of friendship, to my pupil, I should believe myself to be fulfilling a sacred duty in speaking plainly. For this knowledge her nature yearns; she will digest it, it will be transmuted into a part of her blood. Could you be so intolerant, so envious, as to seek to deprive this excellent girl of what will be a positive benefit to her?" For a moment she was silent. "I must be perfectly frank with you," she said, and the embarrassment which flushed her cheeks gave her a winning expression. "My old friend, Leah's father, asked me to question you about your belief. He found one of his daughter's exercise books, in which were certain expressions and sentences that startled him. He himself is entirely destitute of dogmatic fanaticism, as I've already told you, but he is a true child of God, and is now alarmed and grieved to discover that his only daughter aims to be no different from her teacher: an upright child of the world. Therefore--" "I understand," Edwin interrupted with a bitter smile. "You need proceed no farther with his apology. Give my compliments to the worthy gentleman, who will not permit his child to eat from the broad dish, because his own mouth is formed to take nourishment from the narrow bottle. But from what I know of the girl, she will find proper sustenance in spite of this guardianship, though with rather more difficulty. The only loser will be myself. Those grave thoughtful eyes always had a good influence over me. But I might have known it would come to this some day, so--without ill-feeling--farewell." She called to him to detain him. But he had already passed through the ante-room, without ill-feeling, as he had himself said, but not without a sense of bitter sorrow. "And these are the best of them!" he murmured. "If such things happen when the wood is green, what marvel is it that the dry, dead branches and knots, which can nevermore put forth leaf or blossom, crackle so merrily when a heretic is to be burned!" He returned home and spent the remainder of the evening in quiet conversation with Balder, with whom he soon regained his lost cheerfulness, though the shadows would not wholly vanish from his sorely wounded soul. Both slept very little that night. When the pump handle creaked the next morning, they had been up a long time. Balder at his turning lathe, and Edwin wandering about the room, now and then turning the leaves of a book, both silent, as they usually were during the first part of the day. Reginchen brought up with the breakfast tray a carefully folded package and a letter. They had just been left for Edwin.