“Then, Esther, you are doing very wrong to let Mr. Hazard think you can marry him.  You will ruin him, and yourself too.”

“He has seen how I have struggled,” answered Esther with a sort of sob.  “I never knew how gentle and patient a man could be until I saw how he helped me.  He began by taking all the risk.  I told him faithfully that I was not fit for him, and he said that he only asked me to love him.  I did love him.  I love him so much that if he were a beggar in the street here and wanted me, I would get down and pick up rags with him.”

She moaned out this last sentence so piteously that Mrs. Murray’s heart bled.  “Poor child!” she thought.  “It is like crushing a sparrow with a stone.  I must do it quickly.”

“Tell him all about it, Esther!  It is his affair more than yours.  If his love is great enough to take you as you are, do your best, and never let him repent it; but you must make him choose between you and his profession.”

“I can’t do that!” said Esther quickly.  “I would rather go on and leave it all to chance.”

“If you do,” replied Mrs. Murray, “You will only put yourself into his hands.  Sooner or later Mr. Hazard must find out that you don’t belong to him.  Then it will be his duty to make you choose between your will and his.  You had better not let yourself be put in such a position.  A woman can afford to break an engagement, but she can’t afford to be thrown over by a man, not even if he is a clergyman, and that is what Mr. Hazard will have to do to you if you let him go on.”

“Oh, I know him better!” broke out Esther.  She resented bitterly this cruel charge against her lover, but nevertheless it cut into her quivering nerves until her love seemed to wither under it.  The idea that he could ever want to get rid of her was the last drop in her cup of bitterness.  Mrs. Murray knew how to crush her sparrow.  She needed barely five minutes to do it.  From the moment that Esther’s feminine pride was involved, the sparrow was dead.

Certainly Hazard had as yet no thought of giving up his prize, but he had reached the first stage of wondering what he should do with it.  Naturally sanguine and perhaps a little spoiled by flattery and success, he had taken for granted that Esther would at once absorb her existence in his.  He hoped that she would become, like most converts, more zealous than himself.  After a week of trial, finding her not only unaffected by his influence but actually slipping more and more from his control, he began to feel an alarm which grew more acute every hour, and brought him for the first time face to face with the possibility of failure.  What could he do to overcome this fatal coldness.