His movement, he recalled afterward, did not come of a conscious volition, as he rose and descended the chancel steps and walked toward her; he stood for what seemed a long time on the white marble of the aisle looking down on her, his heart wrung by the violence of her grief, which at moments swept through her like a tempest.  She seemed still young, but poverty had marked her with unmistakable signs.  The white, blue-veined hands that clung to the railing of the pew were thin; and the shirtwaist, though clean, was cheap and frayed.  At last she rose from her knees and raised a tear-stained face to his, staring at him in a dumb bewilderment.

“Can I do anything for you?” he said gently, “I am the rector here.”  She did not answer, but continued to stare uncomprehendingly.  He sat down beside her in the pew.

“You are in trouble,” he said.  “Will you let me try to help you?” A sob shook her—­the beginning of a new paroxysm.  He waited patiently until it was over.  Suddenly she got rather wildly and unsteadily to her feet.

“I must go!” she cried.  “Oh, God, what would I do if—­if he wasn’t there?”

Hodder rose too.  She had thrust herself past him into the aisle, but if he had not taken her arm she would have fallen.  Thus they went together to the door of the church, and out into the white, burning sunlight.  In spite of her weakness she seemed actually to be leading him, impelled by a strange force and fled down the steps of the porch to the sidewalk.  And there she paused, seeing him still beside her.  Fortunately he had his hat in his hand.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To take you home,” he replied firmly, “you ought not to go alone.”

A look of something like terror came into her eyes.

“Oh, no!” she protested, with a vehemence that surprised him.  “I am strong.  Oh, thank you, sir,—­but I can go alone.  It’s Dicky—­my little boy.  I’ve never left him so long.  I had gone for the medicine and I saw the church.  I used to go to church, sir, before we had our troubles—­and I just went in.  It suddenly came over me that God might help me—­the doctor can do nothing.”

“I will go with you,” he said.

She ceased to resist, as one submitting to the fatality of a superior will.

The pavements that afternoon, as Hodder and the forlorn woman left the cool porticoes of St. John’s, were like the floor of a stone oven, and the work horses wore little bonnets over their heads.  Keeping to the shady side, the rector and his companion crossed Tower Street with its trolley cars and its awninged stores, and came to that depressing district which had reproached him since the first Sunday of his ministry when he had traversed it with Eldon Parr.  They passed the once prosperous houses, the corner saloons pandering to two vices, decked with the flamboyant signs of the breweries.  The trees were dying along the asphalt and in the yards, the iron fences broken here and there, the copings stained with rust and soot.  Hodder’s thoughts might have been likened to the heated air that simmered above the bricks.