ee,
--have got to live, I am sorry to say, on a lower plane. We've got to deal
with the world as we find it, and do our little best to help things
along. We can't take the Gospel literally, or we should all be ruined
in a day, and swamp everybody else. You understand me?

"I understand you," said the rector.

Mr. Plimpton's cigar had gone out. In spite of himself, he had slipped
from the easy-going, casual tone into one that was becoming persuasive,
apologetic, strenuous. Although the day was not particularly warm, he
began to perspire a little; and he repeated the words over to himself,
"I understand you." What the deuce did the rector know? He had somehow
the air of knowing everything--more than Mr. Plimpton did. And Mr.
Plimpton was beginning to have the unusual and most disagreeable feeling
of having been weighed in the balance and found wanting. He glanced at
his guest, who sat quite still, the head bent a trifle, the disturbing
gray eyes fixed contemplatively an him--accusingly. And yet the
accusation did not seem personal with the clergyman, whose eyes were
nearly the medium, the channels of a greater, an impersonal Ice. It was
true that the man had changed. He was wholly baffling to Mr. Plimpton,
whose sense of alarm increased momentarily into an almost panicky feeling
as he remembered what Langmaid had said. Was this inscrutable rector of
St. John's gazing, knowingly, at the half owner of Harrods Hotel in
Dalton Street, who couldn't take the Gospel literally? There was
evidently no way to find out at once, and suspense would be unbearable,
in vain he told himself that these thoughts were nonsense, the discomfort
persisted, and he had visions of that career in which he had become
one of the first citizens and the respected husband of Charlotte Gore
clashing down about his ears. Why? Because a clergyman should choose
to be quixotic, fanatical? He did not took quixotic, fanatical, Mr.
Plimpton had to admit,--but a good deal saner than he, Mr. Plimpton, must
have appeared at that moment. His throat was dry, and he didn't dare to
make the attempt to relight his cigar.

"There's nothing like getting together--keeping in touch with people,
Mr. Hodder," he managed to say. "I've been out of town a good deal this
summer--putting on a little flesh, I'm sorry to admit. But I've been
meaning to drop into the parish house and talk over those revised plans
with you. I will drop in--in a day or two. I'm interested in the wor