“Ah!” cried Esther, almost fiercely, and blushing crimson, as though Hazard this time had pierced the last restraint on her self-control:  “Why must the church always appeal to my weakness and never to my strength!  I ask for spiritual life and you send me back to my flesh and blood as though I were a tigress you were sending back to her cubs.  What is the use of appealing to my sex? the atheists at least show me respect enough not to do that!”

At this moment the door opened and Strong entered.  It was high time.  The scene threatened to become almost violent.  As Strong came in, Esther was standing by the fire-place, all her restless features flashing with the excitement of her last speech.  Hazard, with his back to the window, was looking at her across the room, his face dark with displeasure.  As Strong stepped between them, a momentary silence followed, when not a sound was heard except the low thunder of the falling waters.  One would have said that storm was in the air.  Suddenly Hazard turned on the unlucky professor and hurled at him the lightning.

“You are the cause of all this! what is your motive?”

Strong looked at him with surprise, but understood in a moment what had happened.  Seeing himself destined in any case to be the victim of the coming wrath, he quietly made up his mind to bear the lot of all mediators and inter-meddlers.

“I am afraid you are half right,” he answered.  “My stupidity may have made matters a little worse.”

“What was your motive?” repeated Hazard sternly.

“My motive was to fight your battle for you,” replied Strong unruffled; “and I did it clumsily, that’s all!  I might have known it beforehand.”

“Have you been trying to supplant me in order to get yourself in my place?” demanded Hazard, still in the tone of a master.

“No!” replied Strong, half inclined to laugh.

“You will never find happiness there!” continued Hazard, turning to Esther, and pointing with a sweep of his hand to Strong.

“Esther agrees with you on that point,” said Strong, beginning to think it time that this scene should end.  “I don’t mind telling you, too, that since I have seen her stand out against your persecution, I would give any chance I have of salvation if she would marry me; but you needn’t be alarmed about it,—­she won’t!”

“She will!” broke in Hazard abruptly.  “You have betrayed me, and your conduct is all of a piece with your theories.”  Then turning to Esther, who still stood motionless and silent before the fire, he went on:  “I am beaten.  You have driven me away, and I will never trouble you again, till, in your days of suffering and anguish you send to me for hope and consolation.  Till then—­God bless you!”

The silence was awful when his retreating footsteps could no longer be heard.  It was peace, but the peace of despair.  As the sound of the jangling sleigh-bells slowly receded from the door, and Esther realized that the romance of her life was ended, she clasped her hands together in a struggle to control her tears.  Strong walked once or twice up and down the room, buried in thought, then suddenly stopping before her, he said in his straight-forward, practical way: