The rector nodded. "I'm ready when you are," he answered.

"The motor's waiting," said the banker, leading the way down the steps to
the sidewalk, where he turned. "Alison, let me introduce Mr. Hodder.
This is my daughter," he added simply.

This sudden disclosure of the young woman's identity had upon Hodder a
certain electric effect, and with it came a realization of the extent to
which--from behind the scenes, so to speak--she had gradually aroused him
to a lively speculation. She seemed to have influenced, to a greater or
less degree, so many lives with which he had come into touch! Compelled
persons to make up their minds about her! And while he sympathized
with Eldon Parr in his abandonment, he had never achieved the full
condemnation which he felt--an impartial Christian morality would have
meted out.

As he uttered the conventional phrase and took her hand, he asked himself
whether her personality justified his interest. Her glance at Gordon
Atterbury in the midst of that gentleman's felicitations on the sermon
had been expressive, Hodder thought, of veiled amusement slightly
tinctured with contempt; and he, Hodder, felt himself to have grown warm
over it. He could not be sure that Alison Parr had not included, in her
inner comment, the sermon likewise, on which he had so spent himself.
What was she doing at church? As her eyes met his own, he seemed to
read a challenge. He had never encountered a woman--he decided--who
so successfully concealed her thought, and at the same time so incited
curiosity about it.

The effect of her reappearance on Gordon Atterbury was painfully
apparent, and Mrs. Larrabbee's remark, "that he had never got over it,"
recurred to Hodder. He possessed the virtue of being faithful, at least,
in spite of the lady's apostasy, and he seemed to be galvanized into a
tenfold nervousness as he hustled after them and handed her, with the
elaborate attention little men are apt to bestow upon women, into the
motor.

"Er--how long shall you be here, Alison?" he asked. "I don't know," she
answered, not unkindly, but with a touch of indifference.

"You treat us shamefully," he informed her, "upon my word! But I'm
coming to call."

"Do," said Alison. Hodder caught her eye again, and this time he was
sure that she surprised in him a certain disdain of Mr. Atterbury's zeal.
Her smile was faint, yet unmistakable.

He resented it. Indeed, it was with a well-defined feeling of antagonism
that h