Summary

Book 2 opens with Claude returning from visiting Ralph. Claude laments that he had “not anything to do with” the settling of the frontier (56). At home, Claude walks past Enid’s house and admires her father’s, Mr. Royce’s, mill, thinking the mill was a place “of sharp-contrasts; bright sun and deep shade, roaring sound and heavy, dripping silence” (56). Claude then has a conversation with Enid, who says she does not feel free because she cannot go to China to be a missionary with her sister. Enid also says she worries that Claude has become a free-thinker instead of a God-fearing man because he hangs out with Ernest Havel (who is an atheist). After that conversation, Claude begins visiting Enid often.

Claude and Enid pay a visit to town, where Enid sees a preacher, Brother Weldon. Claude is disgusted by Brother Weldon’s...