The interview had been a terrible strain.

His courage was unshaken, but his strength was leaving him; a pathetic desire for sympathy and understanding seized him.

"I love her too much to change.
Don't you understand?
But I cling to more than human strength, when I say, I will not change." "Then, by Heaven," cried the rector, "neither shall she! With my consent she shall never return to a man who reads such books as those," and he pointed to the row of Edwards,--"a man who denies good in anything outside his own miserable conception of religion; the very existence of whose faith is a denunciation and execration of every one who does not agree with him.

You are firm, sir?
So is she! I bid you good-day." He turned to the door, breathing hard through his shut teeth.

John Ward followed him, and laid his hand upon his arm.