What would the bishop do?  Holder’s relations with him had been more than friendly, but whether the bishop’s views were sufficiently liberal to support him in the extreme stand he had taken he could not surmise.  For it meant that the bishop, too, must enter into a conflict with the first layman of his diocese, of whose hospitality he had so often partaken, whose contributions had been on so lordly a scale.  The bishop was in his seventieth year, and had hitherto successfully fought any attempt to supply him with an assistant,—­coadjutor or suffragan.

At such times the fear grew upon Hodder that he might be recommended for trial, forced to abandon his fight to free the Church from the fetters that bound her:  that the implacable hostility of his enemies would rob him of his opportunity.

Thus ties were broken, many hard things were said and brought to his ears.  There were vacancies in the classes and guilds, absences that pained him, silences that wrung him. . . .

Of all the conversations he held, that with Mrs. Constable was perhaps the most illuminating and distressing.  As on that other occasion, when he had gone to her, this visit was under the seal of confession, unknown to her husband.  And Hodder had been taken aback, on seeing her enter his office, by the very tragedy in her face—­the tragedy he had momentarily beheld once before.  He drew up a chair for her, and when she had sat down she gazed at him some moments without speaking.

“I had to come,” she said; “there are some things I feel I must ask you.  For I have been very miserable since I heard you on Sunday.”

He nodded gently.

“I knew that you would change your views—­become broader, greater.  You may remember that I predicted it.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I thought you would grow more liberal, less bigoted, if you will allow me to say so.  But I didn’t anticipate—­” she hesitated, and looked up at him again.

“That I would take the extreme position I have taken,” he assisted her.

“Oh, Mr. Hodder,” she cried impulsively, “was it necessary to go so far? and all at once.  I am here not only because I am miserable, but I am concerned on your account.  You hurt me very much that day you came to me, but you made me your friend.  And I wonder if you really understand the terrible, bitter feeling you have aroused, the powerful enemies you have made by speaking so—­so unreservedly?”

“I was prepared for it,” he answered.  “Surely, Mrs. Constable, once I have arrived at what I believe to be the truth, you would not have me temporize?”

She gave him a wan smile.

“In one respect, at least, you have not changed,” she told him.  “I am afraid you are not the temporizing kind.  But wasn’t there,—­mayn’t there still be a way to deal with this fearful situation?  You have made it very hard for us—­for them.  You have given them no loophole of escape.  And there are many, like me, who do not wish to see your career ruined, Mr. Hodder.”