thrust on me. There are
the charities--Galt House, and all that, but I never seem to get at
anything, at the people I'd like to help. It's like sending money
to China. There is no direct touch any more. It's like seeing one's
opportunities through an iron grating."

Hodder started at the phrase, so exactly had she expressed his own case.

"Ah," he said, "the iron grating bars the path of the Church, too."

And just what was the iron grating?

They had many moments of intimacy during that fort night, though none in
which the plumb of their conversation descended to such a depth. For
he was, as she had said, always "putting her off." Was it because he
couldn't satisfy her craving? give her the solution for which--he began
to see--she thirsted? Why didn't that religion that she seemed outwardly
to profess and accept without qualification--the religion he taught set
her at rest? show her the path?

Down in his heart he knew that he feared to ask.

That Mrs. Larrabbee was still another revelation, that she was not at
rest, was gradually revealed to him as the days passed. Her spirit, too,
like his own, like 'Mrs Constable's, like Eldon Parr's, like Eleanor
Goodrich's, was divided against itself; and this phenomenon in Mrs.
Larrabbee was perhaps a greater shock to him, since he had always
regarded her as essentially in equilibrium. One of his reasons,
indeed,--in addition to the friendship that had grown up between
them,--for coming to visit her had been to gain the effect of her poise
on his own. Poise in a modern woman, leading a modern life. It was thus
she attracted him. It was not that he ignored her frivolous side; it was
nicely balanced by the other, and that other seemed growing. The social,
she accepted at what appeared to be its own worth. Unlike Mrs. Plimpton,
for instance, she was so innately a lady that she had met with no
resistance in the Eastern watering places, and her sense of values had
remained the truer for it.

He did not admire her the less now he had discovered that the poise was
not so adjusted as he had thought it, but his feeling about her changed,
grew more personal, more complicated. She was showing an alarming
tendency to lean on him at a time when he was examining with some
concern his own supports. She possessed intelligence and fascination,
she was a woman whose attentions would have flattered and disturbed any
man with a spark of virility, and Hodder had constantly before his
eye