But I must not forget to speak of a matter much more practical just now. You mentioned the letter that you sent to father,--"The contents you might imagine even if he did not show it to you." Well, he did not show it to me, but from the effect it produced upon him I am obliged to infer that it contained the most iniquitous blasphemies. Philip, I do hope you are not subject to fits of "righteous indignation!" I could welcome a season of secular rage in a man as I could a fierce wind in sultry weather, but this kind of fury that cloaks itself in the guise of outraged piety is very trying. No sooner did father read your letter than he strode in upon me like a grey-bearded firebrand. The offending letter was crushed in his hand, and his glasses were akimbo on his nose, the way they always are when he is perturbed. I spare you the details, but from the nature of his questions you might have thought he was examining you through me for a licence to preach. I did not try to deceive him in regard to your views, but my own impression of them is so nebulous that the very vagueness of my replies increased his alarm. Nor did I protest at the abuse he heaped upon your absent head. For I know how wickedly and unscrupulously you acted in the felony of my love, and there was a certain humorous satisfaction in hearing father give a "philosophic proposition" to your criminality. My only prayer was that he might not ask me if I loved you. Philip, I would rather live on bread and water a week than confess it to any living man besides yourself. But father has dwelt too long outside the realm of romance to ask that very natural question. Finally I protested feebly: "But how can it vitally affect a woman's happiness whether or not her husband accepts the doctrine of repentance just as you do? Can he not love and cherish his wife even if he does question the veracity of Jonah's whaling experience?" But when I looked up and saw his face, I was ashamed, and ran and kissed him, and straightened his glasses so that he could see me with both eyes. But, dear Heart, his eyes were too full of tears to fire upon me. And as I sat there upon the arm of his chair, twisting his sacred beard, this is what he told me. When my mother died, he said, and left me a little puckered pink mite in his arms, he had solemnly dedicated me to God. And he declared, moreover, that he could not be faithless to his vow by giving me in marriage to an infidel. Being an infidel, Philip, is much worse than being a plain heathen; an infidel is a heathen raised to the sixteenth power of iniquity! Now I rarely quote Scripture, for I have too much guile in me to justify the liberty, but I could not refrain from mentioning Abraham's dilemma, it seemed so appropriate to the occasion,--how when he was about to offer up Isaac, he saw a little he-goat suggestively nearby fastened among the thorns; and I suggested that instead of sacrificing me he should take the widow Smith's little