ast, this was
extraordinary, if not a little disquieting. Now and again his thoughts
reverted to the garden, and to the woman who had made it. Why had she
deserted?

At length, after he had been walking for nearly an hour, he halted and
looked about him. He was within a few blocks of the church, a little to
one side of Tower Street, the main east and west highway of the city,
in the midst of that district in which Mr. Parr had made the remark that
poverty was inevitable. Slovenly and depressing at noonday, it seemed
now frankly to have flung off its mask. Dusk was gathering, and with it
a smoke-stained fog that lent a sickly tinge to the lights. Women slunk
by him: the saloons, apparently closed, and many houses with veiled
windows betrayed secret and sinister gleams. In the midst of a block
rose a tall, pretentious though cheaply constructed building with the
words "Hotel Albert" in flaming electric letters above an archway. Once
more his eye read Dalton Street on a lamp....

Hodder resumed his walk more slowly, and in a few minutes reached his
rooms in the parish house.

CHAPTER IV. SOME RIDDLES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

I Although he found the complications of a modern city parish somewhat
bewildering, the new rector entered into his duties that winter with
apostolic zeal. He was aware of limitations and anomalies, but his faith
was boundless, his energy the subject of good-natured comment by his
vestry and parishioners, whose pressing invitations' to dinners he
was often compelled to refuse. There was in John Hodder something
indefinable that inflamed curiosity and left it unsatisfied.

His excuse for attending these dinners, which indeed were relaxing and
enjoyable, he found in the obvious duty of getting to know the most
important members of his congregation. But invariably he came away from
them with an inner sense of having been baffled in this object. With
a few exceptions, these modern people seemed to have no time for
friendship in the real meaning of the word, no desire to carry a
relationship beyond a certain point. Although he was their spiritual
pastor, he knew less about most of them at the end of the winter than
their butlers and their maids.

They were kind, they were delightful, they were interested in him--he
occasionally thought--as a somewhat anachronistic phenomenon. They
petted, respected him, and deferred to him. He represented to them an
element in life they recognized, and which