ess boy; and after she had gone East
she had received with incredulity and then with amusement the news of
his venture into altruistic politics. It was his efficiency she had
doubted, not his sincerity. Later tidings, contemptuous and eventually
irritable utterances of her own father, together with accounts in the
New York newspapers of his campaign, had convinced her in spite of
herself that Bedloe Hubbell had actually shaken the seats of power. And
somehow, as she now took him in, he looked it.

His transformation was one of the signs, one of the mysteries of the
times. The ridicule and abuse of the press, the opposition and enmity
of his childhood friends, had developed the man of force she now beheld,
and who came forward to greet her.

"Alison!" he exclaimed. He had changed in one sense, and not in another.
Her colour deepened as the sound of his voice brought back the lapsed
memories of the old intimacy. For she had been kind to him, kinder than
to any other; and the news of his marriage--to a woman from the Pacific
coast--had actually induced in her certain longings and regrets. When
the cards had reached her, New York and the excitement of the life into
which she had been weakly, if somewhat unwittingly, drawn had already
begun to pall.

"I'm so glad to see you," she told him. "I've heard--so many things. And
I'm very much in sympathy with what you're doing."

They crossed the street, and walked away from the church together. She
had surprised him, and made him uncomfortable.

"You've been away so long," he managed to say, "perhaps you do not
realize--"

"Oh, yes, I do," she interrupted. "I am on the other side, on your side.
I thought of writing you, when you nearly won last autumn."

"You see it, too?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, I've changed, too. Not so much as you," she added, shyly. "I
always had a certain sympathy, you know, with the Robin Hoods."

He laughed at her designation, both pleased and taken aback by her
praise... But he wondered if she knew the extent of his criticism of her
father.

"That rector is a wonderful man," he broke out, irrelevantly. "I can't
get over' him--I can't quite grasp the fact that he exists, that he has
dared to do what he has done."

This brought her colour back, but she faced him bravely. "You think he is
wonderful, then?"

"Don't you?" he demanded.

She assented. "But I am curious to know why you do. Somehow, I never
thought of--you--"

"As religious," he sup