Alison coloured.  But she retorted with spirit.

“That is true of a great many persons to-day who are thinking on the subject.  If Christianity is a solution of life, people are demanding of the churches that they shall perform their function, and show us how, and why, or else cease to encumber the world.”

Eldon Parr folded up his newspaper.

“So you are going to Church this morning,” he said.

“Yes.  At what time will you be ready?”

“At quarter to eleven.  But if you are going to St. John’, you will have to start earlier.  I’ll order a car at half past ten.”

“Where are you going?” She held her breath, unconsciously, for the answer.

“To Calvary,” he replied coldly, as he rose to leave the room.  “But I hesitate to ask you to come,—­I am afraid you will not find a religion there that suits you.”

For a moment she could not trust herself to speak.  The secret which, ever since Friday evening, she had been burning to learn was disclosed . . .  Her father had broken with Mr. Hodder!

“Please don’t order the motor for me,” she said.  “I’d rather go in the street cars.”

She sat very still in the empty room, her face burning.

Characteristically, her father had not once mentioned the rector of St. John’s, yet had contrived to imply that her interest in Hodder was greater than her interest in religion.  And she was forced to admit, with her customary honesty, that the implication was true.

The numbers who knew Alison Parr casually thought her cold.  They admired a certain quality in her work, but they did not suspect that that quality was the incomplete expression of an innate idealism capable of being fanned into flame,—­for she was subject to rare but ardent enthusiasms which kindled and transformed her incredibly in the eyes of the few to whom the process had been revealed.  She had had even a longer list of suitors than any one guessed; men who—­usually by accident—­had touched the hidden spring, and suddenly beholding an unimagined woman, had consequently lost their heads.  The mistake most of them had made (for subtlety in such affairs is not a masculine trait) was the failure to recognize and continue to present the quality in them which had awakened her.  She had invariably discovered the feet of clay.

Thus disillusion had been her misfortune—­perhaps it would be more accurate to say her fortune.  She had built up, after each invasion, her defences more carefully and solidly than before, only to be again astonished and dismayed by the next onslaught, until at length the question had become insistent—­the question of an alliance for purposes of greater security.  She had returned to her childhood home to consider it, frankly recognizing it as a compromise, a fall . . . .