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Yes, she replied, firmly, I do.
You intend to turn Christian?
Yes, to try to.
How long have you and Mr. Osmond been concocting this?
I don't know what you mean, said Erica, terribly wounded by his
tone.
Did he send you down here to tell me?
Mr. Osmond knows nothing about it, said Erica. How could I tell
any one before you, father?
Raeburn was touched by this. He took several turns up and down the
room before speaking again, but the more he grasped the idea the
deeper grew his grief and the hotter his anger. He was a man of
iron will, however, and he kept both under. When at length he did
speak, his voice was quiet and cold and repressed.
Sit down, he said, motioning her to a chair. This is not a
subject that we can dismiss in five minutes' talk. I must hear
your reasons. We will put aside all personal considerations. I
will consider you just as an ordinary opponent.
His coldness chilled her to the heart. Was it always to be like
this? How could she possibly endure it? How was she to answer his
questions how was she to vindicate her faith when the mere tone of
his voice seemed to paralyze her heart? He was indeed treating her
with the cold formality of an opponent, but never for a single
instant could she forget that he was her father the being she loved
best in the whole world.
But Erica was brave and true; she knew that this was a crisis in
their lives, and, thrusting down her own personal pain, she forced
herself to give her whole heart and mind to the searching and
perplexing questions with which her father intended to test the
reality of her convictions. Had she been unaccustomed to his mode
of attack he would have hopelessly silenced her, as far as argument
goes in half an hour; but not only was Erica's faith perfectly
real, but she had, as it were, herself traversed the whole of his
objections and difficulties. Though far from imagining that she
understood everything, she had yet so firmly grasped the innermost
truth that all details as yet outside her vision were to her no
longer hindrances and bugbears, but so many new possibilities other
hopes of fresh manifestations of God.
She held her ground well, and every minute Raeburn realized more
keenly that whatever hopes he had entertained of reconvincing her
were futile. What made it all the more painful to him was that the
thoroughness of the training he had given her now only told against
him, and the argument which he carried on in a cold, metallic voice
was really piercing his very heart, for it was like arguing against

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