"I am not instructing you to commit murder."
"You are requesting me to do something analogous, to murder all that is best and noblest in the parish of Copstone."
"That's an outrageous falsehood."
She stood up.
"Of course, if you accuse me of deliberate untruth--"
"You won't get out of it like that. I tell you, frankly, that if you are not careful I shall go straight to Crookenden and tell him with my own lips that I have forbidden you to stand."
"He knows already that you would forbid me. They all know it. It is because of that knowledge they have urged me to take up the position I have done, and to persist in it; in the hope that my action may do something to mitigate the evil example which you are setting to the parish."
"This is awful. When I stood beside you at the altar I never thought that you would speak and behave to me like this--never!"
"Nor I that I should be constrained to such a course. You may, however, easily make the situation more tolerable."
"How?"