he parish of St. John's into a
living organization of faith and works? The curious thing was that he
had the power, and save in moments of weariness he felt it in him. He
must try to remember always that this power was from God. But why had
he been unable to apply it?

And there remained disturbingly in his memory certain phrases of Mrs.
Constable's, such as "elements of growth."

He would change, she had said; and he had appeared to her as one with
depths. Unsuspected depths--pockets that held the steam, which was
increasing in pressure. At Bremerton, it had not gathered in the
pockets, he had used it all--all had counted; but in the feverish,
ceaseless activity of the city parish he had never once felt that intense
satisfaction of emptying himself, nor, the sweet weariness that follows
it. His seemed the weariness of futility. And introspection was
revealing a crack--after so many years--in that self that he had believed
to be so strongly welded. Such was the strain of the pent-up force. He
recognized the danger-signal. The same phenomenon had driven him into
the Church, where the steam had found an outlet--until now. And yet,
so far as his examination went, he had not lost his beliefs, but the
power of communicating them to others.

Bremerton, and the sight of another carrying on the work in which he had
been happy, weighed upon him, and Bar Harbor offered distraction. Mrs.
Larrabbee had not hesitated to remind him of his promise to visit her.
If the gallery of portraits of the congregation of St. John's were to be
painted, this lady's, at the age of thirty, would not be the least
interesting. It would have been out of place in no ancestral hall, and
many of her friends were surprised, after her husband's death, that she
did not choose one wherein to hang it. She might have. For she was the
quintessence of that feminine product of our country at which Europe has
never ceased to wonder, and to give her history would no more account for
her than the process of manufacture explains the most delicate of scents.
Her poise, her quick detection of sham in others not so fortunate, her
absolute conviction that all things were as they ought to be; her
charity, her interest in its recipients; her smile, which was kindness
itself; her delicate features, her white skin with its natural bloom;
the grace of her movements, and her hair, which had a different color in
changing lights--such an ensemble is not to be depicted save by