"Well, I don't know but yer right, though the preacher don't say so." Helen did not speak for a moment, and then said quietly, "Perhaps not,--not yet; but he will say so some day.

He is so good himself, you know, Alfaretta, he cannot bear to think every one else does not love and serve God, too; and it seems to him as though they ought to be punished if they don't." This was a very lame explanation, but it closed the discussion, and she hurried away from the honest, searching eyes of her servant, which she felt must see through the flimsy excuse.

Her eyes burned with sudden tears that blurred the white landscape, it hurt her to excuse her husband's belief even to herself, and gave her a feeling of disloyalty to him: for a moment she weakly longed to creep into the shelter of the monstrous error in which she felt he lived, that they might be one there, as in everything else.

"Yet it does not matter," she said to herself, smiling a little.

"We love each other.