to me was ever in vain. But again, I will let that go.

"What I am getting at is this. You have made a mess of the affairs of
St. John's, you have made a mess of your life. I am willing to give you
the credit for sincerity. Some of my friends might not be. You want to
marry my daughter, and she is apparently determined to marry you. If you
are sensible and resign from St. John's now I will settle on Alison a
sufficient sum to allow you both to live in comfort and decency the rest
of your lives. I will not have it said of me that I permitted my
daughter to become destitute."

After he had finished, the rector sat for so long a time that the banker
nervously shifted in his chair. The clergyman's look had a cumulative
quality, an intensity which seemed to increase as the silence continued.
There was no anger in it, no fanaticism. On the contrary, the higher
sanity of it was disturbing; and its extraordinary implication--gradually
borne in upon Eldon Parr--was that he himself were not in his right mind.
The words, when they came, were a confirmation of this inference.

"It is what I feared, Mr. Parr," he said. "You are as yet incapable of
comprehending."

"What do you mean?" asked the banker, jerking his hand from the table.

The rector shook his head.

"If this great chastisement with which you have been visited has given
you no hint of the true meaning of life, nothing I can say will avail.
If you will not yet listen to the Spirit which is trying to make you
comprehend, how then will you listen to me? How am I to open your eyes
to the paradox of truth, that he who would save his life shall lose it,
that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for
a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God? If you will not believe him
who said that, you will not believe me. I can only beg of you, strive to
understand, that your heart many be softened, that your suffering soul
may be released."

It is to be recorded, strangely, that Eldon Parr did not grow angry in
his turn. The burning eyes looked out at Hodder curiously, as at a being
upon whom the vials of wrath were somehow wasted, against whom the
weapons of power were of no account. The fanatic had become a phenomenon
which had momentarily stilled passion to arouse interest. . . "Art
thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?"

"Do you mean to say"--such was the question that sprang to Eldon Parr's
lips--"that you take the Bible literally?