was peculiarly vulnerable.
She had taken him off his guard. That the brilliant Mrs. Larrabbee
should have desired him--or what she believed was him--was food enough
for thought, was an indication of an idealism in her nature that he
would not have suspected. From a worldly point of view, the marriage
would have commended itself to none of her friends. Yet Hodder perceived
clearly that he could not have given her what she desired, since the
marriage would have killed it in him. She offered him the other thing.
Once again he had managed somehow to cling to his dream of what the
relationship between man and woman should be, and he saw more and more
distinctly that he had coveted not only the jewel, but its setting. He
could not see her out of it--she faded. Nor could he see himself in it.

Luxury,--of course,--that was what he had spurned. Luxury in contrast
to Dalton Street, to the whirring factories near the church which
discharged, at nightfall, their quotas of wan women and stunted
children. And yet here he was catering to luxury, providing religion for
it! Religion!

Early in November he heard that Mrs. Larrabbee had suddenly decided to
go abroad without returning home....

That winter Hodder might have been likened to a Niagara for energy; an
unharnessed Niagara--such would have been his own comment. He seemed
to turn no wheels, or only a few at least, and feebly. And while the
spectacle of their rector's zeal was no doubt an edifying one to his
parishioners, they gave him to understand that they would have been
satisfied with less. They admired, but chided him gently; and in
February Mr. Parr offered to take him to Florida. He was tired, and it
was largely because he dreaded the reflection inevitable in a period
of rest, that he refused.... And throughout these months, the feeling
recurred, with increased strength, that McCrae was still watching
him,--the notion persisted that his assistant held to a theory of his
own, if he could but be induced to reveal it. Hodder refrained from
making the appeal. Sometimes he was on the point of losing patience with
this enigmatic person.

Congratulations on the fact that his congregation was increasing brought
him little comfort, since a cold analysis of the newcomers who were
renting pews was in itself an indication of the lack of that thing he
so vainly sought. The decorous families who were now allying themselves
with St. John's did so at the expense of other churches ei