conscious
effort of his own, was clear to him. But had he not merely arrested her?
Would she not presently disappear, leaving only in his life the scarlet
thread which she had woven into it for all time? Would he not fail to
change, permanently, the texture of hers?

Such were his hopes and fears concerning her, and they were mingled
inextricably with other hopes and fears which had to do with the great
venture of his life. He dwelt in a realm of paradoxes, discovered
that exaltation was not incompatible with anxiety and dread. He had
no thought of wavering; he had achieved to an extent he would not
have believed possible the sense of consecration which brings with
it indifference to personal fortunes, and the revelation of the inner
world, and yet he shrank from the wounds he was about to receive--and
give. Outwardly controlled, he lived in the state of intense excitement
of the leader waiting for the time to charge.

II

The moment was at hand. September had waned, the nights were cooling,
his parishioners were returning from the East. One of these was Eleanor
Goodrich, whom he met on a corner, tanned and revived from her long
summer in Massachusetts. She had inherited the kindly shrewdness of
glance characteristic of gentlefolk, the glance that seeks to
penetrate externals in its concern for the well-being of those whom it
scrutinizes. And he was subtly aware, though she greeted him cordially,
that she felt a change in him without being able to account for it.

"I hear you have been here all summer," she said reproachfully. "Mother
and father and all of us were much disappointed that you did not come to
us on the Cape."

"I should have come, if it had been possible," he replied. "It seems to
have done you a world of good."

"Oh, I!" She seemed slightly embarrassed, puzzled, and did not look at
him. "I am burned as disgracefully as Evelyn. Phil came on for a month.

"He tells me he hasn't seen you, but that isn't surprising, for he
hasn't been to church since June--and he's a vestryman now, too."

She was in mourning for her father-in-law, who had died in the spring.
Phil Goodrich had taken his place. Eleanor found the conversation,
somehow, drifting out of her control. It was not at all what she would
have desired to say. Her colour heightened.

"I have not been conducting the services, but I resume them next
Sunday," said the rector. "I ought to tell you," he went on, regarding
her, "in view of the co