Charles Osmond looked grave.

"My dear old fellow, of course you must do as you think best," he
replied, after a minute's pause; "but I doubt if it is wise just now."

"Why, it is the very time of all others when she might be glad of me,"
said Brian.

"But can't you see," returned his father, "that Erica is the last girl
in the world to marry a man because she was unhappy, or because she had
got a difficult bit of life in front of her? Of course, if you really
think she cares for you, it is different; but--"

"She does not care for me," said Brian quickly; "but in time I think she
would. I think I could make her happy."

"Yes, I think you could, but I fancy you will make shipwreck of your
hopes if you speak to her now. Have patience."

"I am sick of patience!" cried Brian desperately. "Have I not been
patient for nearly seven years? For what would you have me wait? Am I to
wait till, between our injustice to secularists and their injustice to
Christians, she is half badgered out of life? If she could but love me,
if she would marry me now, I could save her from what must be a life of
misery."

"If I could but get you to see it from what I am convinced is Erica's
point of view!" exclaimed Charles Osmond. "Forget for a minute that you
are her knight and champion, and try to see things as she sees them.
Let us try to reverse things. Just imagine for a minute that you are the
child of some leading man, the head and chief of a party or association
we'll say that you are the child of an Archbishop of Canterbury. You are
carefully educated, you become a zealous worker, you enter into all your
father's interests, you are able to help him in a thousand ways. But,
by slow degrees, we will say that you perceive a want in the system in
which you have been educated, and, after many years of careful study
and thought, you are obliged to reject your former beliefs and to accept
that other system which shall most recommend itself to you. We will
suppose for the sake of analogy that you become a secularist. Knowing
that your change of views will be a terrible grief to your father the
archbishop, it takes your whole strength to make your confession, and
you not only feel your father's personal pain, but you feel that his
pain will be increased by his public position. To make it worse, too, we
must suppose that a number of people calling themselves atheists, and
in the name of atheism, have at intervals for the last thirty years be