“Would you prefer,” he asked, “to see my soul destroyed?  And your own?”

Her lips twitched.

“Isn’t there any other way but that?  Can’t this transformation, which you say is necessary and vital, come gradually?  You carried me away as I listened to you, I was not myself when I came out of the church.  But I have been thinking ever since.  Consider my husband, Mr. Hodder,” her voice faltered.  “I shall not mince matters with you—­I know you will not pretend to misunderstand me.  I have never seen him so upset since since that time Gertrude was married.  He is in a most cruel position.  I confessed to you once that Mr. Parr had made for us all the money we possess.  Everett is fond of you, but if he espouses your cause, on the vestry, we shall be ruined.”

Hodder was greatly moved.

“It is not my cause, Mrs. Constable,” he said.

“Surely, Christianity is not so harsh and uncompromising as that!  And do you quite do justice to—­to some of these men?  There was no one to tell them the wrongs they were committing—­if they were indeed wrongs.  Our civilization is far from perfect.”

“The Church may have been remiss, mistaken,” the rector replied.  “But the Christianity she has taught, adulterated though it were, has never condoned the acts which have become commonplace in modern finance.  There must have been a time, in the life of every one of these men, when they had to take that first step against which their consciences revolted, when they realized that fraud and taking advantage of the ignorant and weak were wrong.  They have deliberately preferred gratification in this life to spiritual development—­if indeed they believe in any future whatsoever.  For ‘whosoever will save his life shall lose it’ is as true to-day as it ever was.  They have had their choice—­they still have it.”

“I am to blame,” she cried.  “I drove my husband to it, I made him think of riches, it was I who cultivated Mr. Parr.  And oh, I suppose I am justly punished.  I have never been happy for one instant since that day.”

He watched her, pityingly, as she wept.  But presently she raised her face, wonderingly.

“You do believe in the future life after—­after what you have been through?”

“I do,” he answered simply.

“Yes—­I am sure you do.  It is that, what you are, convinces me you do.  Even the remarkable and sensible explanation you gave of it when you interpreted the parable of the talents is not so powerful as the impression that you yourself believe after thinking it out for yourself —­not accepting the old explanations.  And then,” she added, with a note as of surprise, “you are willing to sacrifice everything for it!”

“And you?” he asked.  “Cannot you, too, believe to that extent?”

“Everything?” she repeated.  “It would mean—­poverty.  No—­God help me —­I cannot face it.  I have become too hard.  I cannot do without the world.  And even if I could!  Oh, you cannot know what you ask Everett, my husband—­I must say it, you make me tell you everything—­is not free.  He is little better than a slave to Eldon Parr.  I hate Eldon Parr,” she added, with startling inconsequence.