Alison left her, marvelling at the passage between them, and that, of all persons in the congregation of St. John’s, the lightning should have struck Mrs. Constable. . .

Turning to the right on Burton Street, she soon found herself walking rapidly westward through deserted streets lined by factories and warehouses, and silent in the Sabbath calm . . . .  She thought of Hodder, she would have liked to go to him in that hour . . . .

In Park Street, luncheon was half over, and Nelson Langmaid was at the table with her father.  The lawyer glanced at her curiously as she entered the room, and his usual word of banter, she thought, was rather lame.  The two went on, for some time, discussing a railroad suit in Texas.  And Alison, as she hurried through her meal, leaving the dishes almost untouched, scarcely heard them.  Once, in her reverie, her thoughts reverted to another Sunday when Hodder had sat, an honoured guest, in the chair which Mr. Langmaid now occupied . . . .

It was not until they got up from the table that her father turned to her.

“Did you have a good sermon?” he asked.

It was the underlying note of challenge to which she responded.

“The only good sermon I have ever heard.”

Their eyes met.  Langmaid looked down at the tip of his cigar.

“Mr. Hodder,” said Eldon Parr, “is to be congratulated.”

II

Hodder, when the service was over, had sought the familiar recess in the robing-room, the words which he himself had spoken still ringing in his ears.  And then he recalled the desperate prayer with which he had entered the pulpit, that it might be given him in that hour what to say:  the vivid memories of the passions and miseries in Dalton Street, the sudden, hot response of indignation at the complacency confronting him.  His voice had trembled with anger . . . .  He remembered, as he had paused in his denunciation of these who had eyes and saw not, meeting the upturned look of Alison Parr, and his anger had turned to pity for their blindness—­which once had been his own; and he had gone on and on, striving to interpret for them his new revelation of the message of the Saviour, to impress upon them the dreadful yet sublime meaning of life eternal.  And it was in that moment the vision of the meaning of the evolution of his race, of the Prodigal turning to responsibility—­of which he once had had a glimpse—­had risen before his eyes in its completeness—­the guiding hand of God in history!  The Spirit in these complacent souls, as yet unstirred . . . .

So complete, now, was his forgetfulness of self, of his future, of the irrevocable consequences of the step he had taken, that it was only gradually he became aware that some one was standing near him, and with a start he recognized McCrae.

“There are some waiting to speak to ye,” his assistant said.