But to each argument of hers he had but one reply,--"The Bible, ma'am, the Word of God, instructs us" thus or thus,--and he returned again and again with unwearied obstinacy to his own position.

After a while Helen's annoyance at the man got the better of her judgment, and she wrote to him, saying she did not wish to argue with him again, and must beg him not to come to the parsonage to see her.
Mr.Grier, too, horrified at his wife's reports of what Mrs.Ward had said, hastened to Lockhaven to reproach and admonish John for permitting such heresy in his household; for Mr.Grier held with St.Paul that the husband was head of the wife, even to the extent of regulating her conscience.

John was not at home, so he turned his attack upon the real offender, assuring her that it was for her soul's sake that he thus dealt with her.

Helen had brought the interview to a sudden close by refusing to hear further argument, and bowing Mr.Grier from the room, with a certain steady look from under her level brows and a compression of the lips which, greatly to his surprise when he thought it over, silenced him.
The talks with John could not, of course, be called painful, for they were with him, but they were futile.
When the last evening came before she was to leave home, Helen knew, with a dull pain of helpless remorse, that it was a relief to go; she was glad that she could not hear Elder Dean's voice for a fortnight, or even know, she said with a pathetic little laugh to her husband, that she "was destroying anybody's hope of hell, in the parish." "Yes," John answered, "it will be good for you to be away from it all for a time.

It is hard to think clearly, hurried by my impatient anxiety to have you reach a certain conclusion.