you, Mr.
Parr, in his Name, first to make your peace with your brothers before you
presume to lay another gift on the altar."

During this withering condemnation of himself Eldon Parr sat motionless,
his face grown livid, an expression on it that continued to haunt Hodder
long afterwards. An expression, indeed, which made the banker almost
unrecognizable.

"Go," he whispered, his hand trembling visibly as he pointed towards the
door. "Go--I have had enough of this."

"Not until I have said one thing more," replied the rector, undaunted.
"I have found the woman whose marriage with your son you prevented, whom
you bought off and started on the road to hell without any sense of
responsibility. You have made of her a prostitute and a drunkard.
Whether she can be rescued or not is problematical. She, too, is in
Mr. Bentley's care, a man upon whom you once showed no mercy. I leave
Garvin, who has gone to his death, and Kate Marcy and Horace Bentley to
your conscience, Mr. Parr. That they are representative of many others,
I do not doubt. I tell you solemnly that the whole meaning of life is
service to others, and I warn you, before it is too late, to repent and
make amends. Gifts will not help you, and charities are of no avail."

At the reference to Kate Marcy Eldon Parr's hand dropped to his side.
He seemed to have physical difficulty in speaking.

"Ah, you have found that woman!" He leaned an elbow on the desk,
he seemed suddenly to have become weary, spent, old. And Hodder,
as he watched him, perceived--that his haggard look was directed towards
a photograph in a silver frame on the table--a photograph of Preston
Parr. At length he broke the silence.

"What would you have had me do?" he asked. "Permit my son to marry a
woman of the streets, I suppose. That would have been Christianity,
according to your notion. Come now, what world you have done, if your
son had been in question?"

A wave of pity swept over the rector.

"Why," he said, why did you have nothing but cruelty in your heart, and
contempt for her? When you saw that she was willing, for the love of the
son whom you loved, to give up all that life meant to her, how could you
destroy her without a qualm? The crime you committed was that you
refused to see God in that woman's soul, when he had revealed himself to
you. You looked for wile, for cunning, for self-seeking,--and they were
not there. Love had obliterated them. When you saw how meekly she
obeye