el of the police
force?" he asked.

"Not at all," said Eldon Parr, whose feelings seemed to be rising. "I
am sorry for Constable. He feels the shame of this thing keenly, and he
ought to go away for a while to one of these quiet resorts. I offered
him my car. Sometimes I think that women have no morals. At any rate,
this modern notion of giving them their liberty is sheer folly. Look
what they have done with it! Instead of remaining at home, where they
belong, they are going out into the world and turning it topsy-turvy.
And if a man doesn't let them have a free hand, they get a divorce and
marry some idiot who will."

Mr. Parr pushed back his chair and rose abruptly, starting for the door.
The rector followed him, forcibly struck by the unusual bitterness in
his tone.

"If I have spoken strongly, it is because I feel strongly," he said in
a strange, thickened voice. "Hodder, how would you like to live in this
house--alone?"

The rector looked down upon him with keen, comprehending eyes, and saw
Eldon Parr as he only, of all men, had seen him. For he himself did not
understand his own strange power of drawing forth the spirit from its
shell, of compelling the inner, suffering thing to reveal itself.

"This poison," Eldon Parr went on unevenly, "has eaten into my own
family. My daughter, who might have been a comfort and a companion,
since she chose not to marry, was carried away by it, and thought it
incumbent upon her to have a career of her own. And now I have a choice
of thirty rooms, and not a soul to share them with. Sometimes, at night,
I make up my mind to sell this house. But I can't do it--something
holds me back, hope, superstition, or whatever you've a mind to call it.
You've never seen all of the house, have you?" he asked.

The rector slowly shook his head, and the movement might have been one
that he would have used in acquiescence to the odd whim of a child. Mr.
Parr led the way up the wide staircase to the corridor above, traversing
chamber after chamber, turning on the lights.

"These were my wife's rooms," he said, "they are just as she left them.
And these my daughter Alison's, when she chooses to pay me a visit. I
didn't realize that I should have to spend the last years of my life
alone. And I meant, when I gave my wife a house, to have it the best in
the city. I spared nothing on it, as you see, neither care nor money.
I had the best architect I could find, and used the best material. And