You can wait, if you
want to;" but there, her anxiety getting the better of her resentment,
she added, "Is she comin' back soon?"

"I'll wait," said Dr. Howe briefly, walking past her into John Ward's
study.

"Insufferable people!" he muttered. He looked about him as he entered the
room, and the poverty of the bookshelves did not escape his keen eyes,
nor the open volume of Jonathan Edwards on the writing-table. There was
a vase beside it, which held one dried and withered rose; but it is
doubtful if the pathos of the flower which was to await Helen's return
would have softened him, even if he could have known it. He stopped and
glanced at the book, and then began to read it, holding it close to his
eyes, while, with his other hand behind him, he grasped his hat and
stick.

He read the frequently quoted passages from Edwards, that God holds man
over hell as a man might hold a spider or some loathsome insect over the
fire, with the satisfaction one feels in detecting a proof of the vicious
nature of an enemy. "Ward is naturally cruel," he said to himself. "I've
always thought so. That speech of his about slavery showed it."

He put down the book with an emphasis which argued ill for his opinion of
a man who could study such words, and began to pace up and down the room
like some caged animal, glancing once with a smothered exclamation at the
old leather-covered volume, which had fallen upon the floor; he even gave
it a furtive kick, as he passed.

He was so occupied with his own thoughts, he did not see John Ward come
up the garden path and enter the parsonage, and when, a moment
afterwards, the preacher came into the room, Dr. Howe started at the
change in him. These weeks of spiritual conflict had left their mark upon
him. His eyes had a strained look which was almost terror, and his firm,
gentle lips were set in a line of silent and patient pain. Yet a certain
brightness rested upon his face, which for a moment hid its pallor.

Through fear, and darkness, and grief, through an extraordinary
misconception and strange blindness of the soul, John Ward had come, in
his complete abnegation of himself, close to God. Since that June night,
when he met the temptation which love for his wife held out to him, he
had clung with all the passion of his life to his love for God. The whole
night, upon his knees, he besought God's mercy for Helen, and fought the
wild desire of flight the longing to take her and go away, where h