, and she may not have suspected
the extent to which the firmness was feigned.

"You have promised to make other visits? The Fergusons,--they said they
expected you."

"I'm going west--home," he said, and the word sounded odd.

"At this season! But there is nobody in church, at least only a few, and
Mr. McCrae can take care of those--he always does. He likes it."

Hodder smiled in spite of himself. He might have told her that those
outside the church were troubling him. But he did not, since he had
small confidence in being able to bring them in.

"I have been away too long, I am getting spoiled," he replied, with an
attempt at lightness. He forced his eyes to meet hers, and she read in
them an unalterable resolution.

"It is my opinion you are too conscientious, even for a clergyman," she
said, and now it was her lightness that hurt. She protested no more.
And as she led the way homeward through the narrow forest path, her head
erect, still maintaining this lighter tone, he wondered how deeply she
had read him; how far her intuition had carried her below the surface;
whether she guessed the presence of that stifled thing in him which
was crying feebly for life; whether it was that she had discovered,
or something else? He must give it the chance it craved. He must get
away--he must think. To surrender now would mean destruction...

Early the next morning, as he left the pier in the motor boat, he saw
a pink scarf waving high above him from the loggia. And he flung up
his hand in return. Mingled with a faint sense of freedom was intense
sadness.

CHAPTER VIII. THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE

From the vantage point of his rooms in the parish house, Hodder reviewed
the situation. And despite the desires thronging after him in his flight
he had the feeling of once who, in the dark, has been very near to
annihilation. What had shaken him most was the revelation of an
old enemy which, watching its chance, had beset him at the first
opportunity; and at a time when the scheme of life, which he flattered
himself to have solved forever, was threatening once more to resolve
itself into fragments. He had, as if by a miracle, escaped destruction
in some insidious form.

He shrank instinctively from an analysis of the woman in regard to
whom his feelings were, so complicated, and yet by no means lacking in
tenderness. But as time went on, he recognized more and more that she
had come into his life at a moment when he