pity, and nothing to
fear--thus reversing the sentiments of the public.

Yet the friendship between John Hodder and Eldon Parr defied any definite
analysis on the rector's part, and was perhaps the strangest--and most
disquieting element that had as yet come into Hodder's life. The nature
of his intimacy with the banker, if intimacy it might be called, might
have surprised his other parishioners if they could have been hidden
spectators of one of these dinners. There were long silences when the
medium of communication, tenuous at best, seemed to snap, and the two sat
gazing at each other as from mountain peaks across impassable valleys.
With all the will in the world, their souls lost touch, though the sense
in the clergyman of the other's vague yearning for human companionship
was never absent. It was this yearning that attracted Hodder, who found
in it a deep pathos.

After one of these intervals of silence, Eldon Parr looked up from his
claret.

"I congratulate you, Hodder, on the stand you took in regard to
Constable's daughter," he said.

"I didn't suppose it was known," answered the rector, in surprise.

"Constable told me. I have reason to believe that he doesn't sympathize
with his wife in her attitude on this matter. It's pulled him down,
--you've noticed that he looks badly?"

"Yes," said the rector. He did not care to discuss the affair; he had
hoped it would not become known; and he shunned the congratulations of
Gordon Atterbury, which in such case would be inevitable. And in spite
of the conviction that he had done his duty, the memory of his talk with
Mrs. Constable never failed to make him, uncomfortable.

Exasperation crept into Mr. Pares voice.

"I can't think what's got into women in these times--at Mrs. Constable's
age they ought to know better. Nothing restrains them. They have
reached a point where they don't even respect the Church. And when that
happens, it is serious indeed. The Church is the governor on our social
engine, and it is supposed to impose a restraint upon the lawless."

Hodder could not refrain from smiling a little at the banker's
conception.

"Doesn't that reduce the Church somewhere to the level of the police
force?" he asked.

"Not at all," said Eldon Parr, whose feelings seemed to be rising.
"I am sorry for Constable. He feels the shame of this thing keenly,
and he ought to go away for a while to one of these quiet resorts.
I offered him my car. Sometimes I think