‘There is one thing to be done, Eva, and the sooner the better.’

’Do you mean that old Mr. Timmis must give up his shop to my father?  Never! never!’

‘I mean,’ said Clive quietly, ’that we must marry without your father’s consent.’

She shook her head slowly and sadly, relapsing into calmness.

‘You shake your head, Eva, but it must be so.’

‘I can’t, my dear.’

’Do you mean to say that you will allow your father’s childish whim—­for it’s nothing else; he can’t find any objection to me as a husband for you, and he knows it—­that you will allow his childish whim to spoil your life and mine?  Remember, you are twenty-six and I am thirty-two.’

’I can’t do it!  I daren’t!  I’m mad with myself for feeling like this, but I daren’t!  And even if I dared I wouldn’t.  Clive, you don’t know!  You can’t tell how it is!’

Her sorrowful, pathetic firmness daunted him.  She was now composed, mistress again of herself, and her moral force dominated him.

‘Then, you and I are to be unhappy all our lives, Eva?’

The soft influences of the night seemed to direct her voice as, after a long pause, she uttered the words:  ’No one is ever quite unhappy in all this world.’  There was another pause, as she gazed steadily down into the wonderful valley.  ‘We must wait.’

‘Wait!’ echoed Clive with angry grimness.  ’He will live for twenty years!’

‘No one is ever quite unhappy in all this world,’ she repeated dreamily, as one might turn over a treasure in order to examine it.

Now for the epilogue to the feud.  Two years passed, and it happened that there was to be a Revival at the Bethesda Chapel.  One morning the superintendent minister and the revivalist called on Ezra Brunt at his shop.  When informed of their presence, the great draper had an impulse of anger, for, like many stouter chapel-goers than himself, he would scarcely tolerate the intrusion of religion into commerce.  However, the visit had an air of ceremony, and he could not decline to see these ambassadors of heaven in his private room.  The revivalist, a cheery, shrewd man, whose powers of organization were obvious, and who seemed to put organization before everything else, pleased Ezra Brunt at once.

‘We want a specially good congregation at the opening meeting to-night,’ said the revivalist.  ’Now, the basis of a good congregation must necessarily be the regular pillars of the church, and therefore we are making a few calls this morning to insure the presence of our chief men—­the men of influence and position.  You will come, Mr. Brunt, and you will let it be known among your employes that they will please you by coming too?’

Ezra Brunt was by no means a regular pillar of the Bethesda, but he had a vague sensation of flattery, and he consented; indeed, there was no alternative.

The first hymn was being sung when he reached the chapel.  To his surprise, he found the place crowded in every part.  A man whom he did not know led him to a wooden form which had been put in the space between the front pews and the Communion-rail.  He felt strange there, and uneasy, apprehensive.