m. His son Preston was here
last month, and was taken out to the yacht every night in an unspeakable
state. And Alison hasn't been what might be called a blessing."

"She must be unusual," said the rector, musingly.

"Oh, Alison is a Person. She has become quite the fashion, and has more
work than she can possibly attend to. Very few women with her good looks
could have done what she has without severe criticism, and something
worse, perhaps. The most extraordinary thing about her is her contempt
for what her father has gained, and for conventionalities. It always
amuses me when I think that she might have been the wife of Gordon
Atterbury. The Goddess of Liberty linked to--what?"

Hodder thought instinctively of the Church. But he remained silent.

"As a rule, men are such fools about the women they wish to marry," she
continued. "She would have led him a dance for a year or two, and then
calmly and inexorably left him. And there was her father, with all his
ability and genius, couldn't see it either, but fondly imagined that
Alison as Gordon Atterbury's wife, would magically become an Atterbury
and a bourgeoise, see that the corners were dusted in the big house, sew
underwear for the poor, and fast in Lent."

"And she is happy--where she is?" he inquired somewhat naively.

"She is self-sufficient," said Mrs. Larrabbee, with unusual feeling,
"and that is just what most women are not, in these days. Oh, why has
life become such a problem? Sometimes I think, with all that I have,
I'm not, so well off as one of those salesgirls in Ferguson's, at home.
I'm always searching for things to do--nothing is 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 wi