“The thing is done,” said Hester.  “I did not wish you to read it, and you have read it.  It can’t be helped.  We won’t speak of it again.”

“It is my duty to speak of it.”

Hester made an impatient movement.

“But it is not mine to listen,” she said.  “Besides, I know all you are going to say—­the same as about The Idyll, only worse.  That it is coarse and profane and exaggerated, and that I have put in improprieties in order to make it sell, and that I run down the clergy, and that the book ought never to be published.  Dear James, spare me.  You and I shall never agree on certain subjects.  Let us be content to differ.”

Mr. Gresley was disconcerted.  Your antagonist has no business to discount all you were going to remark by saying it first.

His color was gradually leaving him.  This was worse than an Easter vestry meeting, and that was saying a good deal.

“I cannot stand by calmly and see you walk over a precipice if I can forcibly hold you back,” he said.  “I think, Hester, you forget that it is my affection for you that makes me try to restrain you.  It is for your own sake that—­that—­”

“That what?”

“That I cannot allow this book to be published,” said Mr. Gresley, in a low voice.  He hardly ever lowered his voice.

There was a moment’s pause.  Hester felt the situation was serious.  How not to wound him, yet not to yield?

“I am eight-and-twenty,” she said.  “I am afraid I must follow my own judgment.  You have no responsibility in the matter.  If I am blamed,” she smiled proudly—­at that instant she knew all that her book was worth—­“the blame will not attach to you.  And, after all, Minna and the Pratts and the Thursbys need not read it.”

“No one will read it,” said Mr. Gresley.  “It was a profane, wicked book.  No one will read it.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said Hester.

The brother and sister looked at each other with eyes of flint.

“No one will read it,” repeated Mr. Gresley—­he was courageous, but all his courage was only just enough—­“because, for your own sake, and for the sake of the innocent minds which might be perverted by it, I have—­I have—­burned it.”

Hester stood motionless, like one struck by lightning, livid, dead already—­all but the eyes.

“You dared not,” said the dead lips.  The terrible eyes were fixed on him.  They burned into him.

He was frightened.

“Dear Hester,” he said, “I will help you to rewrite it.  I will give up an hour every morning till—­” Would she never fall?  Would she always stand up like that?  “Some day you will know I was right to do it.  You are angry now, but some day—­” If she would only faint, or cry, or look away.

“When Regie was ill,” said the slow, difficult voice, “I did what I could.  I did not let your child die.  Why have you killed mine?”

There was a little patter of feet in the passage.  The door was slowly opened by Mary, and Regie walked solemnly in, holding with extreme care a small tin-plate, on which reposed a large potato.