“Of one thing I am assured, Mrs. Goodrich,” Hodder replied, “that the logical result of independent thinking is anarchy.  Under this modern tendency toward individual creeds, the Church has split and split again until, if it keeps on, we shall have no Church at all to carry on the work of our Lord on earth.  History proves that to take anything away from the faith is to atrophy, to destroy it.  The answer to your arguments is to be seen on every side, atheism, hypocrisy, vice, misery, insane and cruel grasping after wealth.  There is only one remedy I can see,” he added, inflexibly, yet with a touch of sadness, “believe.”

“What if we can’t believe?” she asked.

“You can.”  He spoke with unshaken conviction.

“You can if you make the effort, and I am sure you will.  My experience is that in the early stages of spiritual development we are impervious to certain truths.  Will you permit me to recommend to you certain books dealing with these questions in a modern way?”

“I will read them gladly,” she said, and rose.

“And then, perhaps, we may have another talk,” he added, looking down at her.  “Give my regards to your husband.”

Yet, as he stood in the window looking after her retreating figure, there gradually grew upon him a vague and uncomfortable feeling that he had not been satisfactory, and this was curiously coupled with the realization that the visit had added a considerable increment to his already pronounced liking for Eleanor Goodrich.  She was, paradoxically, his kind of a person—­such was the form the puzzle took.  And so ably had she presented her difficulties that, at one point of the discussion, it had ironically occurred to him to refer her to Gordon Atterbury.  Mr. Atterbury’s faith was like an egg, and he took precious care not to have it broken or chipped.

Hodder found himself smiling.  It was perhaps inevitable that he began at once to contrast Mrs. Goodrich with other feminine parishioners who had sought him out, and who had surrendered unconditionally.  They had evinced an equally disturbing tendency,—­a willingness to be overborne.  For had he not, indeed, overborne them?  He could not help suspecting these other ladies of a craving for the luxury of the confessional.  One thing was certain,—­he had much less respect for them than for Eleanor Goodrich . . . .

That afternoon he sent her the list of books.  But the weeks passed, and she did not come back.  Once, when he met her at a dinner of Mrs. Preston’s, both avoided the subject of her visit, both were conscious of a constraint.  She did not know how often, unseen by her, his eyes had sought her out from the chancel.  For she continued to come to church as frequently as before, and often brought her husband.

II

One bright and boisterous afternoon in March, Hodder alighted from an electric car amid a swirl of dust and stood gazing for a moment at the stone gate-houses of that ‘rus in urbe’, Waverley Place, and at the gold block-letters written thereon, “No Thoroughfare.”  Against those gates and their contiguous grill the rude onward rush of the city had beaten in vain, and, baffled, had swept around their serene enclosure, westward.