dder's task easier--or rather less difficult.
His feelings were even more complicated than he had anticipated. The
moments of suspense were trying to his nerves, and he had a shrewd
notion that this making men wait was a favourite manoeuvre of Eldon
Parr's; nor had he underrated the benumbing force of that personality.
It was evident that the financier intended him to open the battle,
and he was--as he had expected--finding it difficult to marshal the
regiments of his arguments. In vain he thought of the tragedy of
Garvin.... The thing was more complicated. And behind this redoubtable
and sinister Eldon Parr he saw, as it were, the wraith of that: other
who had once confessed the misery of his loneliness....

At last the banker rang, sharply, the bell on his desk. A secretary
entered, to whom he dictated a telegram which contained these words:
"Langmaid has discovered a way out." It was to be sent to an address
in Texas. Then he turned in his chair and crossed his knees, his hand
fondling an ivory paper-cutter. He smiled a little.

"Well, Mr. Hodder," he said.

The rector, intensely on his guard, merely inclined his head in
recognition that his turn had come.

"I was sorry," the banker continued, after a perceptible pause,--"that
you could not see your way clear to have come with me on the cruise."

"I must thank you again," Hodder answered, "but I felt--as I wrote
you--that certain matters made it impossible for me to go."

"I suppose you had your reasons, but I think you would have enjoyed the
trip. I had a good, seaworthy boat--I chartered her from Mr. Lieber, the
president of the Continental Zinc, you know. I went as far as Labrador.
A wonderful coast, Mr. Hodder."

"It must be," agreed the rector. It was clear that Mr. Parr intended to
throw upon him the onus of the first move. There was a silence, brief,
indeed, but long enough for Hodder to feel more and more distinctly the
granite hardness which the other had become, to experience a rising,
reenforcing anger. He went forward, steadily but resolutely, on the
crest of it. "I have remained in the city," he continued, "and I have
had the opportunity to discover certain facts of which I have hitherto
been ignorant, and which, in my opinion, profoundly affect the welfare
of the church. It is of these I wished to speak to you."

Mr. Parr waited.

"It is not much of an exaggeration to say that ever since I came here
I have been aware that St. John's, consideri