sob of excitement in her throat--bent forward and touched his shoulder.

"Suppose--suppose I were to be ill--dying--and the voice came, 'Let her
go! She is in your way; it would be better for you she should die'--would
you just let go?--see me drop, drop, drop, through all eternity, to make
your soul safe?"

"Laura!" cried a strong voice. And, with a spring, Helbeck was beside
her, capturing both her cold hands in one of his, a mingled tenderness
and wrath flashing from him before which she shrank. But though she drew
away from him--her small face so white below the broad black hat!--she
was not quelled. Before he could speak, she had said in sharp separate
words, hardly above a whisper:

"It is that horrible egotism of religion that poisons everything! And
if--if one shared it, well and good, one might make terms with it, like a
wild thing one had tamed. But outside it, and at war with it, what can
one do but hate--hate--_hate_--it!"

"My God!" he said in bewilderment, "where am I to begin?"

He stared at her with a passionate amazement. Never before had she shown
such forces of personality, or been able to express herself with an
utterance so mature and resonant. Her stature had grown before his eyes.
In the little frowning figure there was something newly, tragically fine.
The man for the first time felt his match. His own hidden self rose at
last to the struggle with a kind of angry joy, eager at once to conquer
the woman and to pierce the sceptic.

"Listen to me, Laura!" he said, bending over her. "That was more than I