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trained as she had been, should relapse so strangely? Her whole
life had been spent among atheists; there was not a single
objection to Christianity which had not been placed before her.
She had read much, thought much; she had worked indefatigably to
aid the cause. Again and again she had braved personal insult and
wounding injustice as an atheist. She had voluntarily gone into
exile to help her father in his difficulties. Through the shameful
injustice of a Christian, she had missed the last years of her
mother's life, and had been absent from her death bed. She had
borne on behalf of her father's cause a thousand irritating
privations, a thousand harassing cares; she had been hardworking,
and loyal, and devoted; and now all at once she had turned
completely round and placed herself in the opposing ranks!
Raeburn had all his life been fighting against desperate odds, and
in the conflict he had lost wellnigh everything. He had lost his
home long ago, he had lost his father's good will, he had lost the
whole of his inheritance; he had lost health, and strength, and
reputation, and money; he had lost all the lesser comforts of life;
and now he said to himself that he was to lose his dearest treasure
of all, his child.
Bitter, hopeless, lifelong division had arisen between them. For
twentythree years he had loved her as truly as ever father loved
child, and this was his reward! A miserable sense of isolation
arose in his heart. Erica had been so much to him how could he
live without her? The muscles of his face quivered with emotion;
he clinched his hands almost fiercely.
Then he tortured himself by letting his thoughts wander back to the
past. That very day years ago, when he had first learned what
fatherhood meant; the pride of watching his little girl as the
years rolled on; the terrible anxiety of one long and dangerous
illness she had passed through how well he remembered the time!
They were very poor, could afford no expensive luxuries; he had
shared the nursing with his wife. One night he remembered toiling
away with his pen while the sick child was actually on his knee; he
always fancied that the pamphlet he had then been at work on was
more bitterly sarcastic than anything he had ever written. Then on
once more into years of desperately hard work and disappointingly
small results, imbittered by persecution, crippled by penalties and
neverending litigation; but always there had been the little child
waiting for him at home, who by her babylike freedom from care
could make him smile when he was overwhelmed with anxiety. How
could he ever have endured the bitter obloquy, the slanderous

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