Bentley hadn't helped her. She's learning to be a
stenographer. Do you remember her?--her name is Garvin."

"Did she say--anything more?" Hodder anxiously demanded.

"No," said Alison, surprised by his manner, "except that Mr. Bentley had
found her a place to live, near the hospital, with a widow who was a
friend of his. And that the child was well, and she could look life in
the face again. Oh, it is terrible to think that people all around us
are getting into such straits, and that we are so indifferent to it!"

Hodder did not speak at once. He was wondering, now that she had renewed
her friendship with Mr. Bentley, whether certain revelations on her part
were not inevitable . . . .

She was regarding him, and he was aware that her curiosity was aflame.
Again he wondered whether it were curiosity or--interest.

"You did not tell me, when we met in the Park, that you were no longer
at St. John's."

Did Mr. Bentley tell you?"

"No. He merely said he saw a great deal of you. Martha Preston told me.
She is still here, and goes to church occasionally. She was much
surprised to learn that you were in the city.

"I am still living in the parish house," he said. "I am--taking my
vacation."

"With Mr. Bentley?" Her eyes were still on his face.

"With Mr. Bentley," he replied.

He had spoken without bitterness. Although there had indeed been
bitterness in his soul, it passed away in the atmosphere of Mr. Bentley's
house. The process now taking place in him was the same complication of
negative and positive currents he had felt in her presence before. He
was surprised to find that his old antipathy to agnosticism held over,
in her case; to discover, now, that he was by no means, as yet, in view
of the existence of Horace Bentley, to go the full length of unbelief!
On the other hand, he saw that she had divined much of what had happened
to him, and he felt radiating from her a sympathetic understanding which
seemed almost a claim. She had a claim, although he could not have said
of what it was constituted. Their personal relationship bore
responsibilities. It suddenly came over him, in fact, that the two
persons who in all the world were nearest him were herself and Mr.
Bentley! He responded, scarce knowing why he did so, to the positive
current.

"With Mr. Bentley," he repeated, smiling, and meeting her eyes, "I have
been learning something about the actual conditions of life in a modern
city."

She bent a litt