She would have spared John if she could (and she knew how impossible it was that the rector could move her husband), yet she felt that her family had a right to insist upon a personal explanation, and to make an effort, however futile, to induce her husband to take her home.

In the mean time, they waited for an answer to the rector's letter.

Helen had written, but she knew no answer would come to her.

She understood too well that sweet and gentle nature, which yielded readily in small things, and was possessed of invincible determination in crises, to hope that John could change.

Yet she had written; she had shared her hopelessness as well as her grief with him, when she told him how impossible it was for her to think as he did.