of creating sympathy, of compelling others to
accept--temporarily, at least--his point of view. It was this faculty,
Hodder perceived, which had heretofore laid an enchantment upon him,
and it was not without a certain wonder that he now felt himself to be
released from the spell.

The perceptions of the banker were as keen, and his sense of security
was brief. Somehow, as he met the searching eye of the rector, he
was unable to see the man as a visionary, but beheld--and, to do him
justice--felt a twinge of respect for an adversary worthy of his steel.

He, who was accustomed to prepare for clouds when they were mere specks
on his horizon, paused even now to marvel why he had not dealt with
this. Here was a man--a fanatic, if he liked--but still a man who
positively did not fear him, to whom his wrath and power were as
nothing! A new and startling and complicated sensation--but Eldon Parr
was no coward. If he had, consciously or unconsciously, formerly looked
upon the clergyman as a dependent, Hodder appeared to be one no more.
The very ruggedness of the man had enhanced, expanded--as it were--until
it filled the room. And Hodder had, with an audacity unparalleled in the
banker's experience arraigned by implication his whole life, managed to
put him on the defensive.

"But if that be your experience," the rector said, "and it has become
your philosophy, what is it in you that impels you to give these large
sums for the public good?"

"I should suppose that you, as a clergyman, might understand that my
motive is a Christian one."

Hodder sat very still, but a higher light came into his eyes.

"Mr. Parr," he replied, "I have been a friend of yours, and I am a
friend still. And what I am going to tell you is not only in the hope
that others may benefit, but that your own soul may be saved. I mean
that literally--your own soul. You are under the impression that you are
a Christian, but you are not and never have been one. And you will
not be one until your whole life is transformed, until you become a
different man. If you do not change, it is my duty to warn you that the
sorrow and suffering, the uneasiness which you now know, and which drive
you on, in search of distraction, to adding useless sums of money to
your fortune--this suffering, I say, will become intensified. You will
die in the knowledge of it, and live on after, in the knowledge of it."

In spite of himself, the financier drew back before this unexpe