in it yet."

Once more he confined his approval to his glance.

"Now you must come and have some breakfast," he said briskly. "If I had
thought about it I should have waited to have it with you."

"I'm not hungry." In the light of his new knowledge, he connected her
sudden dejection with the sight of the bottle.

"But you must eat. You're exhausted from all this work. And a cup of
coffee will make all the difference in the world."

She yielded, pinning on her hat. And he led her, holding the umbrella
over her, to a restaurant in Tower Street, where a man in a white cap and
apron was baking cakes behind a plate-glass window. She drank the
coffee, but in her excitement left the rest of the breakfast almost
untasted.

"Say," she asked him once, "why are you doing this?"

"I don't know," he answered, "except that it gives me pleasure."

"Pleasure?"

"Yes. It makes me feel as if I were of some use."

She considered this.

"Well," she observed, reviled by the coffee, "you're the queerest
minister I ever saw."

When they had reached the pavement she asked him where they were going.

"To see a friend of mine, and a friend of yours," he told her. "He does
net live far from here."

She was silent again, acquiescing. The rain had stopped, the sun was
peeping out furtively through the clouds, the early loiterers in Dalton
Street stared at them curiously. But Hodder was thinking of that house
whither they were bound with a new gratitude, a new wonder that it should
exist. Thus they came to the sheltered vestibule with its glistening
white paint, its polished name plate and doorknob. The grinning,
hospitable darky appeared in answer to the rector's ring.

"Good morning, Sam," he said; "is Mr. Bentley in?"

Sam ushered them ceremoniously into the library, and gate Marcy gazed
about her with awe, as at something absolutely foreign to her experience:
the New Barrington Hotel, the latest pride of the city, recently erected
at the corner of Tower and Jefferson and furnished in the French style,
she might partially have understood. Had she been marvellously and
suddenly transported and established there, existence might still have
evinced a certain continuity. But this house! . .

Mr. Bentley rose from the desk in the corner.

"Oh, it's you, Hodder," he said cheerfully, laying his hand on the
rector's arm. "I was just thinking about you."

"This is Miss Marcy, Mr. Bentley," Hodder said.

Mr. Bentley took her hand a