Helen did not notice the reprimand.
"Now tell me all about it," he continued. "You know you can trust me, and I'll write your husband a letter which will make things clear."
Helen shook her head wearily. "You will not understand. Nothing can be done; it is as fixed as—death. We can neither of us alter it and be ourselves. Oh, I have tried and tried to see some way out of it, until it seems as if my soul were tired."
"I did not intend to be severe, my child," the rector said, with remorseful gentleness, "but in one way it is a more serious thing than you realize. I don't mean this foolishness of a separation; that will all be straightened out in a day or two. But we do not want it gossiped about, and your being here at all, after having started home, looks strange; and of course, if you say anything about having had a—a falling out with Ward, it will make it ten times worse. But you haven't told me what it is?"
"Yes, I'll tell you," she answered, "and then perhaps you will see that it is useless to talk about it. I must just take up the burden of life as well as I can."
"Go on," said the rector.
"John has been much distressed lately," Helen began, looking down at her hands, clasping each other until the skin was white across the knuckles, "because I have not believed in eternal punishment. He has felt that my eternal happiness depended upon holding such a belief." Dr. Howe looked incredulous. "Some weeks ago, one of his elders came to him and told him I was spreading heresy in the church, and damning my own soul and the souls of others who might come to believe as I did,—you know I told Mrs. Davis that her husband had not gone to hell,—and he reproached John for neglecting me and his church too; for John, to spare me, had not preached as he used to, on eternal punishment. It almost killed him, uncle," she said, and her voice, which had given no hint of tears since her return, grew unsteady. "Oh, he has suffered so! and he has felt that it was his fault, a failure in his love, that I did not believe what he holds to be true."
"Heavens!" cried the rector explosively, "heresy? Is this the nineteenth century?"
"Since I have been away," Helen went on, without noticing the interruption, "they have insisted that I should be sessioned,—dealt with, they call it. John won't let me come back to that; but if that were his only reason, we could move away from Lockhaven. He has a nobler reason: he feels that this unbelief of mine will bring eternal misery to my soul, and he would convert me by any means. He has tried all that he knows (for oh, we have discussed it endlessly, uncle Archie!),—argument, prayer, love, tenderness, and now—sorrow."
The rector was sitting very straight in his chair, his plump hands gripping the arms of it, and his lips compressed with anger, while he struggled for patience to hear this preposterous story through.