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 and facing the door at the top of the winding steps which David had climbed. The shaft of the sun, passing through the room, was between David and his father.

"I want you to tell me about your marriage," Ephraim Herrick said at once in his direct way which scorned euphonies and preliminaries. He had a letter on his table beside his Bible and David recognized it for the letter which he had written from camp.

"What do you want to know?" David asked.

"Why you married secretly—that is, secretly as far as your family was concerned."

"Because I'd broken my engagement with Alice," David answered abruptly. "I wrote you that."

"Yes," his father said. "You wrote me that; but you did not write that it was for the purpose of marrying some one else. Why didn't you?"

"Because I knew you'd never approve of Fidelia, father; because—because I loved her, father, and I meant to marry her, no matter what you'd say. And I did it."

"Yes," said his father. "You have brought me an accomplished fact. It is very different from a mere wish or purpose. Fidelia has become your wife; you are her husband. God has joined you."

David jerked, involuntarily, as his father's voice gave him a vision of God—the God of his childhood, whose presence often was here under the steeple and who had joined David to Fidelia, however David denied him.

"I wouldn't have brought you an accomplished fact,"