ing for it!"

"And you?" he asked. "Cannot you, too, believe to that extent?"

"Everything?" she repeated. "It would mean--poverty. No--God help me--I
cannot face it. I have become too hard. I cannot do without the world.
And even if I could! Oh, you cannot know what you ask Everett, my
husband--I must say it, you make me tell you everything--is not free.
He is little better than a slave to Eldon Parr. I hate Eldon Parr," she
added, with startling inconsequence.

"If I had only known what it would lead to when I made Everett what
he is! But I knew nothing of business, and I wanted money, position to
satisfy my craving at the loss of--that other thing. And now I couldn't
change my husband if I would. He hasn't the courage, he hasn't the
vision. What there was of him, long ago, has been killed--and I killed
it. He isn't--anybody, now."

She relapsed again into weeping.

"And then it might not mean only poverty--it might mean disgrace."

"Disgrace!" the rector involuntarily took up the word.

"There are some things he has done," she said in a low voice, "which he
thought he was obliged to do which Eldon Parr made him do."

"But Mr. Parr, too--?" Hodder began.

"Oh, it was to shield Eldon Parr. They could never be traced to him. And
if they ever came out, it would kill my husband. Tell me," she implored,
"what can I do? What shall I do? You are responsible. You have made me
more bitterly unhappy than ever."

"Are you willing," he asked, after a moment, "to make the supreme
renunciation? to face poverty, and perhaps disgrace, to save your soul
and others?"

"And--others?"

"Yes. Your sacrifice would not, could not be in vain. Otherwise I should
be merely urging on you the individualism which you once advocated with
me."

"Renunciation." She pronounced the word questioningly. "Can Christianity
really mean that--renunciation of the world? Must we take it in the
drastic sense of the Church of the early centuries-the Church of the
Martyrs?"

"Christianity demands all of us, or nothing," he replied. "But the false
interpretation of renunciation of the early Church has cast its blight
on Christianity even to our day. Oriental asceticism, Stoicism, Philo
and other influences distorted Christ's meaning. Renunciation does not
mean asceticism, retirement from the world, a denial of life. And the
early Christian, since he was not a citizen, since he took the view that
this mortal existence was essentially bad and kept