e might have been to each other after my mother died. Why is
life so hard? And why are we always getting glimpses of things when it
is too late? It is only honest to say that if I had it to do all over
again, I should have left him as I did.

"It is hard to write you this, but he actually made the condition of my
acceptance of the inheritance that I should not marry you. I really do
not believe I convinced him that you wouldn't have me take the money
under any circumstances. And the dreadful side of it all was that I had
to make it plain to him--after what has happened that my desire to marry
you wasn't the main reason of my refusal. I had to tell him that even
though you had not been in question, I couldn't have taken what he
wished to give me, since it had not been honestly made. He asked me why
I went on eating the food bought with such money, living under his roof?
But I cannot, I will not leave him just yet.... It is two o'clock. I
cannot write any more to-night."

II

The appointed time was at the November dusk, hurried forward nearly an
hour by the falling panoply of smoke driven westward over the Park by
the wet east wind. And the rector was conducted, with due ceremony, to
the office upstairs which he had never again expected to enter, where
that other memorable interview had taken place. The curtains were drawn.
And if the green-shaded lamp--the only light in the room--had been
arranged by a master of dramatic effect, it could not have better served
the setting.

In spite of Alison's letter, Holder was unprepared for the ravages a few
days had made in the face of Eldon Parr. Not that he appeared older: the
impression was less natural, more sinister. The skin had drawn sharply
over the cheek-bones, and strangely the eyes both contradicted and
harmonized with the transformation of the features. These, too, had
changed. They were not dead and lustreless, but gleamed out of the
shadowy caverns into which they had sunk, unyielding, indomitable in
torment,--eyes of a spirit rebellious in the fumes....

This spirit somehow produced the sensation of its being separated from
the body, for the movement of the hand, inviting Holder to seat himself,
seemed almost automatic.

"I understand," said Eldon Parr, "that you wish to marry my daughter."

"It is true that I am to marry Alison," Holder answered, "and that I
intended, later on, to come to inform you of the fact."

He did not mention the death of Preston.