ctor left.

CHAPTER VI. "WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?"

It was one of those moist nights of spring when the air is pungent with
the odour of the softened earth, and the gentle breaths that stirred
the curtains in Mr. Parr's big dining-room wafted, from the garden,
the perfumes of a revived creation,--delicious, hothouse smells. At
intervals, showers might be heard pattering on the walk outside. The
rector of St. John's was dining with his great parishioner.

Here indeed were a subject for some modern master, a chance to picture
for generations to come an aspect of a mighty age, an age that may some
day be deemed but a grotesque and anomalistic survival of a more ancient
logic; a gargoyle carved out of chaos, that bears on its features a
resemblance to the past and the future.

Our scene might almost be mediaeval with its encircling gloom, through
which the heavy tapestries and shadowy corners of the huge apartment may
be dimly made out. In the center, the soft red glow of the candles, the
gleaming silver, the shining cloth, the Church on one side--and what on
the other? No name given it now, no royal name, but still Power. The two
are still in apposition, not yet in opposition, but the discerning may
perchance read a prophecy in the salient features of the priest.

The Man of Power of the beginning of the twentieth century demands a
subtler analysis, presents an enigma to which the immortal portraits
of forgotten Medicis and Capets give no clew. Imagine, if you can, a
Lorenzo or a Grand Louis in a tightly-buttoned frock coat! There must
be some logical connection between the habit and the age, since crimson
velvet and gold brocade would have made Eldon Parr merely ridiculous.

He is by no means ridiculous, yet take him out of the setting and put
him in the street, and you might pass him a dozen times without noticing
him. Nature, and perhaps unconscious art, have provided him with a
protective exterior; he is the colour of his jungle. After he has
crippled you--if you survive--you will never forget him. You will
remember his eye, which can be unsheathed like a rapier; you will recall
his lips as the expression of a relentless negative. The significance
of the slight bridge on the narrow nose is less easy to define. He
is neither tall nor short; his face is clean-shaven, save for scanty,
unobtrusive reddish tufts high on the cheeks; his hair is thin.

It must be borne in mind, however, that our rector did not