ere
his only reason, we could move away from Lockhaven. He has a nobler
reason: he feels that this unbelief of mine will bring eternal misery to
my soul, and he would convert me by any means. He has tried all that he
knows (for oh, we have discussed it endlessly, uncle Archie!),--argument,
prayer, love, tenderness, and now--sorrow."

The rector was sitting very straight in his chair, his plump hands
gripping the arms of it, and his lips compressed with anger, while he
struggled for patience to hear this preposterous story through.

"He makes me suffer," Helen continued, "that I may be saved. And indeed I
don't see how he can do anything else. If a man believes his wife will be
damned for all eternity unless she accepts certain doctrines, I should
think he would move heaven and earth to make her accept them. And John
does believe that. In denying reprobation, I deny revelation, he says,
and also the Atonement, upon which salvation depends. So now you see
why he says I shall not come back to him until I have found the truth."

Then Dr. Howe burst into a torrent of indignant remonstrance. A clergyman
send his wife from him because she does not believe some dogma! Were we
back in the dark ages? It was too monstrously absurd! If the idiots he
preached to forced him to do it, let him leave them; let him come to
Ashurst. The rector would build him a meeting-house, and he could preach
his abominable doctrine to anybody who was fool enough to go and hear
him.

Dr. Howe was walking hastily up and down the room, gesticulating as he
talked. Helen's patient eyes followed him. Again and again she tried to
point out to him her husband's intense sincerity, and the necessity which
his convictions forced upon him. But the rector refused to think Mr.
Ward's attitude worthy of serious consideration. "The man is insane!"
he cried. "Send his wife away from him to force her into a certain
belief? Madness,--I tell you, madness!"

"I cannot hear you speak so of my husband," Helen said very quietly, but
it caused Dr. Howe to conceal his wrath.

"He'll think differently in a day or two," he said. "This nonsense won't
last."

Then Helen, having exhausted all her arguments to show that John was
immovable, said, "Let me read you what he says himself; then you will
understand, perhaps, how real it all is to him, and how he cannot help
it."

"Bah!" cried Dr. Howe, and certainly it was trying to have Helen attempt
to excuse such folly. "I've