Michael Ford sighed heavily, but still he did not speak. His face looked ten years older than it had looked ten minutes ago.
"It cuts me to the heart to hurt you like this after all that you have done for me," continued Edgar, and his voice trembled, "but I see my way plain before my face, and I dare not turn aside; 'for he that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me'."
"Then what do you intend to do?" asked Mr. Ford wearily, looking across his writing-table at the young man standing by the fireplace.
"I intend to join the Hampden House Settlement at Stepney, and to live with the poor and for the poor; and I hope to spend the rest of my life in trying to comfort broken hearts and to brighten darkened homes. I have closed my ears to the cry of suffering humanity long enough—too long, alas!—but at last they have been opened; and after Ephphatha has once been pronounced, a man cannot but listen to the cries of his fellows and to the commands of his God."
"What does Alice say to all this?"
The mention of Alice's name gave her lover fresh courage.
"She agrees with me in all my decisions," he said, "and she is ready to share in all my efforts; in fact, it is her enthusiasm which has inspired and sustained me, and has renewed my strength when I felt ready to fall."
"Are you aware that both you and Alice will each have a very large fortune of your own some day?" Mr. Ford asked drily.
"Is any fortune too large to give to God?" was Edgar's response.
Michael Ford saw that the case was hopeless; therefore he wasted no more time in discussing it. He knew that it is possible, by means of argument, to convince a man's judgment and even to overcome his prejudices; but arguing against a man's conscience is sorry work—ninety-nine times out of a hundred it meets with no success; and the hundredth entails a responsibility which is harder to bear than failure.