orced into a
tumult of discussion and argument, which at last she had begun to meet
with the silence of exhaustion. Elder Dean had come to see her, and she
had received him at first with patience, and given him her reasons for
not believing in hell. There had even been a moment when Helen fancied
that she might convince him of what was so clear and simple to her own
mind. But to each argument of hers he had but one reply,--"The Bible,
ma'am, the Word of God, instructs us" thus or thus,--and he returned
again and again with unwearied obstinacy to his own position. After a
while Helen's annoyance at the man got the better of her judgment, and
she wrote to him, saying she did not wish to argue with him again, and
must beg him not to come to the parsonage to see her.

Mr. Grier, too, horrified at his wife's reports of what Mrs. Ward had
said, hastened to Lockhaven to reproach and admonish John for permitting
such heresy in his household; for Mr. Grier held with St. Paul that the
husband was head of the wife, even to the extent of regulating her
conscience. John was not at home, so he turned his attack upon the real
offender, assuring her that it was for her soul's sake that he thus dealt
with her. Helen had brought the interview to a sudden close by refusing
to hear further argument, and bowing Mr. Grier from the room, with a
certain steady look from under her level brows and a compression of the
lips which, greatly to his surprise when he thought it over, silenced
him.

The talks with John could not, of course, be called painful, for they
were with him, but they were futile.

When the last evening came before she was to leave home, Helen knew, with
a dull pain of helpless remorse, that it was a relief to go; she was glad
that she could not hear Elder Dean's voice for a fortnight, or even know,
she said with a pathetic little laugh to her husband, that she "was
destroying anybody's hope of hell, in the parish."

"Yes," John answered, "it will be good for you to be away from it all for
a time. It is hard to think clearly, hurried by my impatient anxiety to
have you reach a certain conclusion. I realize that. But I know you will
try to reach it, dearest."

Helen shook her head wearily. "No, I am afraid I cannot promise that. You
must not hope that I shall ever come to believe in eternal damnation. Of
course I believe that the consequences of sin are eternal; the effect
upon character must be eternal, and I should think t