The news of the anxiety in Ashurst hurried Helen's visit.

She might be of use, she thought, and she had better go now than a week later.
Perhaps, too, she felt the necessity of calm.

She had been forced 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.