Perhaps it was only natural that there should be that winter a good deal of communication between the secularist's house in Guilford Terrace and the clergyman's house in Guilford Square.

From the first Raeburn had taken a great fancy to Charles Osmond, and now that Brian had become so closely connected with the memory of their sudden bereavement, and had made himself almost one of them by his silent, unobtrusive sympathy, and by his numberless acts of delicate considerateness, a tie was necessarily formed which promised to deepen into one of those close friendships that sometimes exist between two entire families.

It was a bleak, chilly afternoon in March, when Charles Osmond, returning from a long round of parish work, thought he would look in for a few minutes at the Raeburns'; he had a proposal to make to Erica, some fresh work which he thought might interest her. He rang the bell at the now familiar door and was admitted; it carried him back to the day when he had first called there and had been shown into the fire-lit room, with the book-lined walls, and the pretty little girl curled up on the rug, with her cat and her toasting fork. Time had brought many changes since then. This evening he was again shown into the study, but this time the gas was lighted, and there was no little girl upon the hearth rug. Erica was sitting at her desk hard at work. Her face lighted up at the sight of her visitor.

“Every one is out except me,” she said, more brightly than he had heard her speak since her return. “Did you really come to see me. How good of you.”

“But you are busy?” said Charles Osmond, glancing at the papers on the desk. “Press work?”

“Yes, my first article,” said Erica, “it is just finished; but if you'll excuse me for one minute, I ought to correct it; the office boy will call for it directly.”

“Don't hurry; I will wait and get warm in the meantime,” said Charles Osmond, establishing himself by the fire.

There was a silence broken only by the sound of Erica's pen as she crossed out a word or a line. Charles Osmond watched her and mused. This beautiful girl, whose development he could trace now for more than two years back, what would she grow into? Already she was writing in the “Idol Breaker.” He regretted it. Yet it was obviously the most natural employment for her. He looked at her ever-changing face. She was absorbed in her work, her expression varying with the sentences she read; now there was a look of triumphant happiness as she came to something which made her heart beat quickly; again, a shade of dissatisfaction at the consciousness of her inability to express what was in her mind. He could not help thinking that it was one of the noblest faces he had ever seen, and now that the eyes were downcast it was not so terribly sad; there was, moreover, for the first time since her mother's death, a faint tinge of color in her cheeks. Before five minutes could have passed, the bell rang again.

“That is my boy,” she exclaimed, and hastily blotting her sheets, she rolled them up, gave them to the servant, closed her desk, and crossing the room, knelt down in front of the fire to warm her hands, which were stiff and chilly.

“How rude I have been to you,” she said, smiling a little; “I always have been rude to you since the very first time we met.”

“We were always frank with each other,” said Charles Osmond; “I remember you gave me your opinion as to bigots and Christians in the most delightfully open way. So you have been writing your first article?”

“Yes,” and she stretched herself as though she were rather tired and cramped. “I have had a delicious afternoon. Yesterday I was in despair about it, but today it just came—I wrote it straight off.”

“And you are satisfied with it?”

“Satisfied? Oh, no! Is anybody ever satisfied? By the time it is in print I shall want to alter every sixth line. Still, I dare say it will say a little of what I want said?”

“Oh, you do want something said?”

“Of course!” she replied, a little indignantly. “If not, how could I write.”

“I quite agree with you,” said Charles Osmond, “and you mean to take this up as your vocation?”

“If I am thought worthy,” said Erica, coloring a little.

“I see you have high ideas of the art,” said Charles Osmond; “and what is your reason for taking it up?”

“First of all, though it sounds rather illogical,” said Erica, “I write because I MUST; there is something in me which will have its way. Then, too, it is part of our creed that every one should do all in his power to help on the cause, and of course, if only for my father's sake, it would be my greatest pleasure. Then, last of all, I write because I must earn my living.”

“Good reasons all,” said Charles Osmond. “But I don't feel sure that you won't regret having written when you look back several years hence.”

“Oh! I dare say it will all seem crude and ridiculous then, but one must make a beginning,” said Erica.

“And are you sure you have thought out these great questions so thoroughly and fairly that you are capable of teaching others about them?”

“Ah! Now I see what you mean!” exclaimed Erica; “you think I write in defense of atheism, or as an attacker of Christianity. I do nothing of the kind; father would not allow me to, he would not think me old enough. Oh! No, I am only to write the lighter articles which are needed every now and then. Today I had a delightful subject—'Heroes—what are they?'”

“Well, and what is your definition of a hero, I wonder; what are the qualities you think absolutely necessary to make one?”

“I think I have only two absolutely necessary ones,” said Erica; “but my heroes must have these two, they must have brains and goodness.”

“A tolerably sweeping definition,” said Charles Osmond, laughing, “almost equal to a friend of mine who wanted a wife, and said there were only two things he would stipulate for—1,500 a year, and an angel. But it brings us to another definition, you see. We shall agree as to the brains, but how about goodness! What is your definition of that very wide, not to say vague, term?”

“I don't think I can define it,” she said; “but one knows it when one sees it.”

“Do you mean by it unselfishness, courage, truthfulness, or any other virtue?”

“Oh, it isn't any one virtue, or even a parcel of virtues, it will not go into words.”

“It is then the nearest approach to some perfect ideal which is in your mind?”

“I suppose it is,” she said, slowly.

“How did that ideal come into your mind?”

“I don't know; I suppose I got it by inheritance.”

“From the original moneron?”

“You are laughing at me. I don't know how of course, but I have it, which, as far as I can see, is all that matters.”

“I am not sure of that,” said Charles Osmond. “The explanation of that ideal of goodness which more or less clearly exists in all our minds, seems to me to rest only in the conviction that all are children of one perfect Father. And I can give you our definition of goodness without hesitation, it is summed up for us in one word—'Christlikeness.'”

“I cannot see it; it seems to me all exaggerated,” said Erica. “I believe it is only because people are educated to believe and predisposed to think it all good and perfect that there are so many Christians. You may say it is we who are prejudiced. If we are, I'm sure you Christians have done enough to make us so! How could I, for instance, be anything but an atheist? Shall I tell you the very first thing I can remember?”

Her eyes were flashing with indignant light.

“I was a little tiny child—only four years old—but there are some scenes one never forgets. I can see it all as plainly as possible, the room in a hotel, the very doll I was playing with. There was a great noise in the street, trampling, hissing, hooting. I ran to the window, an immense crowd was coming nearer and nearer, the street was black with the throng, they were all shouting and yelling—'Down with the infidel!' 'Kill the atheist!' Then I saw my father, he was there strong and fearless, one man against a thousand! I tell you I saw him, I can see him now, fighting his way on single-handed, not one creature brave enough to stand up for him. I saw him pushed, struck, spit upon, stoned. At last a great brick struck him on the head. I think I must have been too sick or too angry to see any more after that. The next thing I remember is lying on the floor sobbing, and hearing father come into the room and say: 'Why, little son Eric, did you think they'd killed me?' And he picked me up and let me sit on his knee, but there was blood on his face, and as he kissed me it dropped upon my forehead. I tell you, you Christians baptized me into atheism in my own father's blood. They were Christians who stoned him, champions of religion, and they were egged on by the clergy. Did I not hear it all then in my babyhood? And it is true; it is all fact; ask anybody you like; I have not exaggerated.”

“My dear child, I know you have not,” said Charles Osmond, putting his strong hand upon hers. He could feel that she was all trembling with indignation. Was it to be wondered at? “I remember those riots perfectly well,” he continued. “I think I felt and feel as indignant about them as yourself. A fearful mistake was made—Mr. Raeburn was shamefully treated. But, Erica”—it was the first time he had called her by her name—“you who pride yourself upon fairness, you who make justice your watchword must be careful not to let the wrong doing of a few Christians prejudice you against Christianity. You say that we are all predisposed to accept Christ; but candidly you must allow, I think, that you are trebly prejudiced against the very name of Christian. A Christian almost inevitably means to you only one of your father's mistaken persecutors.”

“Yes, you are so much of an exception that I always forget you are one,” said Erica, smiling a little. “Yet you are not like one of us—quite—you somehow stand alone, you are unlike any one I ever met; you and Thekla Sonnenthal and your son make to me a sort of new variety.”

Charles Osmond laughed, and changed the subject. “You are busy with your examination work, I suppose?” And the question led to a long talk about books and lectures.

In truth, Erica had plunged into work of all kinds, not merely from love of it, but because she felt the absolute need of fresh interests, the great danger of dwelling unduly on her sorrow. Then, too, she had just grasped a new idea, an idea at once noble and inspiriting. Hitherto she had thought of a happy future for herself, of a home free from troubles and harassing cares. That was all over now, her golden dream had come to an end, “Hope dead lives nevermore.” The life she had pictured to herself could never be, but her nature was too strong to be crushed by the sorrow; physically the shock had weakened her far more than any one knew, but, mentally, it had been a wonderful stimulant. She rose above herself, above her trouble, and life began to mean something broader and deeper than before.

Hitherto her great desire had been to be free from care, and to be happy; now the one important thing seemed not so much to be happy, as to know. To learn herself, and to help others to learn, became her chief object, and, with all the devotion of an earnest, high-souled nature, she set herself to act out these convictions. She read hard, attended lectures, and twice a week taught in the night school attached to the Institute.

Charles Osmond could not help smiling as she described her days to him. She still retained something of the childishness of an Undine, and as they talked she had taken up her old position on the hearth rug, and Friskarina had crept on to her knee. Here, undoubtedly, was one whom ignorant people would stigmatize as “blue” or as a “femme savante;” they would of course be quite wrong and inexpressively foolish to use such terms, and yet there was, perhaps, something a little incongruous in the two sides, as it were, of Erica's nature, the keen intellect and the child-like devotion, the great love of learning and the intense love of fun and humor. Charles Osmond had only once in all his long years of experience met with a character which interested him so much.

“After all,” he said, when they had talked for some time, “I have never told you that I came on a begging errand, and I half fear that you will be too busy to undertake any more work.”

Erica's face brightened at the word; was not work what she lived for?

“Oh! I am not too busy for anything!” she exclaimed. “I shall quote Marcus Aurelius to you if you say I haven't time! What sort of work?”

“Only, when you can, to come to us in the afternoon and read a little to my mother. Do you think you could? Her eyes are failing, and Brian and I are hard at work all day; I am afraid she is very dull.”

“I should like to come very much,” said Erica, really pleased at the suggestion. “What sort of books would Mrs. Osmond like?”

“Oh, anything! History, travels, science, or even novels, if you are not above reading them!”

“I? Of course not,” said Erica, laughing. “Don't you think we enjoy them as much as other people? When there is time to read them, at least, which isn't often.”

Charles Osmond laughed.

“Very well then, you have a wide field. From Carlyle to Miss Bird, and from Ernst Haeckel to Charles Reade. I should make them into a big sandwich if I were you.”

He said goodbye, and left Erica still on the hearth rug, her face brighter than it had been for months.

“I like that man,” she said to herself. “He's honest and thorough, and good all through. Yet how in the world does he make himself believe in his creed? Goodness, Christlikeness. He looked so grand, too, as he said that. It is wonderful what a personal sort of devotion those three have for their ideal.”

She wandered away to recollections of Thekla Sonnenthal, and that carried her back to the time of their last parting, and the recollection of her sorrow. All at once the loneliness of the present was borne in upon her overwhelmingly; she looked around the little room, the Ilkley couch was pushed away into a corner, there was a pile of newspapers upon it. A great sob escaped her. For a minute she pressed her hands tightly together over her eyes, then she hurriedly opened a book on “Electricity,” and began to read as if for her life.

She was roused in about an hour's time by a laughing exclamation. She started, and looking up, saw her cousin Tom.

“Talk about absorption, and brown studies!” he cried, “why, you eat everything I ever saw. I've been looking at you for at least three minutes.”

Tom was now about nineteen; he had inherited the auburn coloring of the Raeburns, but otherwise he was said to be much more like the Craigies. He was nice looking, but somewhat freckled, and though he was tall and strongly built, he somehow betrayed that he had led a sedentary life and looked, in fact, as if he wanted a training in gymnastics. For the rest he was shrewd, business-like, good-natured, and at present very conceited. He had been Erica's friend and playfellow as long as she could remember; they were brother and sister in all but the name, for they had lived within a stone's throw of each other all their lives, and now shared the same house.

“I never heard you come in,” she said, smiling a little. “You must have been very quiet.”

“I don't believe you'd hear a salute fired in the next room if you were reading, you little book worm! But look here; I've got a parody on the chieftain that'll make you cry with laughing. You remember the smashed windows at the meeting at Rilchester last week?”

Erica remembered well enough, she had felt sore and angry about it, and the comments in the newspapers had not been consolatory. She had learned to dread even the comic papers; but there was nothing spiteful in the one which Tom produced that evening. It was headed:

The parody ran on through the three verses of the song, the conclusion was really witty, and there was no sting in it. Erica laughed over it as she had not laughed for weeks. Tom, who had been trying unsuccessfully to cheer her ever since her return, was quite relieved.

“I believe the sixpence a day style suits you,” he said. “But, I say, isn't anything coming up? I'm as hungry as a hunter.”

Their elders being away for a few days, Tom and Erica were amusing themselves by trying to live on the rather strange diet of the man who published his plan for living at the smallest possible cost. They were already beginning to be rather weary of porridge, pea soup and lentils. This evening pea soup was in the ascendant, and Erica, tired with a long afternoon's work, felt as if she could almost as soon have eaten Thames mud.

“Dear me,” she said, “it never struck me, this is our Lenten penance! Now, wouldn't any one looking in fancy we were poor Romanists without an indulgence?”

“Certainly without any self-indulgence,” said Tom, who never lost an opportunity of making a bad pun.

“It would be a great indulgence to stop eating,” said Erica, sighing over the soup yet to be swallowed.

“Do you think it is more inspiriting to fast in order to save one's soul than it is to pay the chieftain's debts? I wish I could honestly say, like the little French girl in her confession: 'J'ai trop mang.'”

Tom dearly loved that story, he was exceeding fond of getting choice little anecdotes from various religious newspapers, especially those which dealt in much abuse of the Church of Rome, and he retailed them CON AMORE. Erica listened to several, and laughed a good deal over them.

“I wonder, though, they don't see how they play into our hands by putting in these things,” she said after Tom had given her a description of some ludicrous attack made by a ritualist on an evangelical. “I should have thought they would have tried to agree whenever they could, instead of which they seem almost as spiteful to each other as they are to us.”

“They'd know better if they'd more than a grain of sense between them,” said Tom, sweepingly, “but they haven't; and as they're always playing battledoor and shuttlecock with that, it isn't much good to either. Of course they play into our hands. I believe the spiteful ultra-high paper, and the spiteful ultra-low paper do more to promote atheism than the 'Idol-Breaker' itself.”

“How dreadful it must be for men like Mr. Osmond, who see all round, and yet can't stop what they must think the mischief. Mr. Osmond has been here this afternoon.”

“Ah, now, he's a stunning fellow, if you like,” said Tom. “He's not one of the pig-headed narrow-minded set. How he comes to be a parson I can't make out.”

“Well, you see, from their point of view it is the best thing to be; I mean he gets plenty of scope for work. I fancy he feels as much obliged to speak and teach as father does.”

“Pity he's not on our side,” said Tom; “they say he's a first-rate speaker. But I'm afraid he is perfectly crazy on that point; he'll never come over.”

“I don't think we've a right to put the whole of his religiousness down to a mania,” said Erica. “Besides, he is not the sort of man to be even a little mad, there's nothing the least fanatical about him.”

“Call it delusion if you like it better. What's in a name? The thing remains the same. A man can't believe what is utterly against reason without becoming, as far as that particular belief is concerned, unreasonable, beyond the pale of reason, therefore deluded, therefore mad.”

Erica looked perplexed; she did not think Tom's logic altogether good, but she could not correct it. There was, however, a want of generosity about the assertion which instantly appealed to her fine sense of honor.

“I can't argue it out,” she said at last, “but it doesn't seem to me fair to put down what we can't understand in other people to madness; it never seemed to me quite fair for Festus to accuse Paul of madness when he really had made a splendid defense, and it doesn't seem fair that you should accuse Mr. Osmond of being mad.”

“Only on that one point,” said Tom. “Just a little touched, you know. How else can you account for a man like that believing what he professes to believe?”

“I don't know,” said Erica, relapsing into perplexed silence.

“Besides,” continued Tom, “you cry out because I say they must be just a little touched, but they accuse us of something far worse than madness, they accuse us of absolute wickedness.”

“Not all of them,” said Erica.

“The greater part,” said Tom. “How often do you think the chieftain meets with really fair treatment from the antagonists?”

Erica had nothing to say to this. The harshness and intolerance which her father had constantly to encounter was the great grief of her life, the perpetual source of indignation, her strongest argument against Christianity.

“Have you much to do tonight?” she asked, not anxious to stir up afresh the revolt against the world's injustice which the merest touch would set working within her. “I was thinking that, if there was time to spare, we might go to see the professor; he has promised to show me some experiments.”

“Electricity?” Tom pricked up his ears. “Not half a bad idea. If you'll help me we can polish off the letters in an hour or so, and be free by eight o'clock.”

They set to work, and between them disposed of the correspondence.

It was a great relief to Erica after her long day's work to be out in the cool evening air. The night was fine but very windy, indeed the sudden gusts at the street corners made her glad to take Tom's arm. Once, as they rather slackened their speed, half baffled by the storm, a sentence from a passer-by fell on their ears. The speaker looked like a countryman.

“Give me a good gas-burner with pipes and a meter that a honest man can understand! Now this 'ere elective light I say it's not canny; I've no belief in things o' that kind, it won't never—”

The rest of the speech died away in the distance. Tom and Erica laughed, but the incident set Erica thinking. Here was a man who would not believe what he could not understand, who wanted “pipes and a meter,” and for want of comprehensible outward signs pooh-poohed the great new discovery.

“Tom,” she said slowly, and with the manner of one who makes a very unpleasant suggestion, reluctantly putting forward an unwelcome thought, “suppose if, after all, we are like that man, and reject a grand discovery because we don't know and are too ignorant to understand! Tom, just suppose if, after all, Christianity should be true and we in the wrong!”

“Just suppose if, after all, the earth should be a flat plain with the sun moving round it!” replied Tom scornfully.

They were walking down the Strand; he did not speak for some minutes, in fact he was looking at the people who passed by them. For the first time in his life a great contrast struck him. Disreputable vulgarity, wickedness, and vice stared him in the face, then involuntarily he turned to Erica and looked down at her scrutinizingly as he had never looked before. She was evidently wrapped in thought but it was not the intellect in her face which he thought of just then, though it was ever noticeable, nor was it the actual beauty of feature which struck him, it was rather an undefined consciousness that here was a purity which was adorable. From that moment he became no longer a boy, but a man with a high standard of womanhood. Instantly he thought with regret of his scornful little speech—it was contemptible.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, abruptly, as if she had been following his whole train of thought. “Of course one is bound to study the question fairly, but we have done that, and all that remains for us is to live as usefully as we can and as creditably to the cause as may be.”

They had turned down one of the dingy little streets leading to the river, and now stood outside Professor Gosse's door. Erica did not reply. It was true she had heard arguments for and against Christianity all her life, but had she ever studied it with strict impartiality? Had she not always been strongly biased in favor of secularism? Had not Mr. Osmond gone unpleasantly near the mark when he warned her against being prejudiced by the wrong-doing of a few modern Christians against Christianity itself! She was coming now for special instruction in science from one who was best calculated to teach; she would not have dreamed of asking instruction from one who was a disbeliever in science. Would the same apply in matters of religious belief? Was she bound actually to ask instruction from Charles Osmond, for instance, even though she believed that he taught error—harmful error? Yet who was to be the judge of what was error, except by perfectly fair consideration of both sides of the case. Had she been fair? What was perfect fairness?

But people must go on living, and must speak and act even though their minds are in a chaos of doubts and questionings. They had reached Professor Gosse's study, or as he himself called it, his workshop, and Erica turned with relief to the verifiable results of scientific inquiry.