They stood together on the pavement before the massive house, fraught with so many and varied associations for Hodder.  And as he looked up at it, his eye involuntarily rested upon the windows of the boy’s room where Eldon Parr had made his confession.  Alison startled him by pronouncing his name, which came with such unaccustomed sweetness from her lips.  “You will write me to-morrow,” she said, “after you have seen the bishop?”

“Yes, at once.  You mustn’t let it worry you.”

“I feel as if I had cast off that kind of worry forever.  It is only —­the other worries from which we do not escape, from which we do not wish to escape.”

With a wonderful smile she had dropped his hands and gone in at the entrance, when a sound made them turn, the humming of a motor.  And even as they looked it swung into Park Street.

“It’s a taxicab!” she said.  As she spoke it drew up almost beside them, instead of turning in at the driveway, the door opened, and a man alighted.

“Preston!” Alison exclaimed.

He started, turning from the driver, whom he was about to pay.  As for Hodder, he was not only undergoing a certain shock through the sudden contact, at such a moment, with Alison’s brother:  there was an additional shock that this was Alison’s brother and Eldon Parr’s son.  Not that his appearance was shocking, although the well-clad, athletic figure was growing a trifle heavy, and the light from the side lamps of the car revealed dissipation in a still handsome face.  The effect was a subtler one, not to be analyzed, and due to a multitude of preconceptions.

Alison came forward.

“This is Mr. Hodder, Preston,” she said simply.

For a moment Preston continued to stare at the rector without speaking.  Suddenly he put out his hand.

“Mr. Hodder, of St. John’s?” he demanded.

“Yes,” answered Hodder.  His surprise deepened to perplexity at the warmth of the handclasp that followed.

A smile that brought back vividly to Hodder the sunny expression of the schoolboy in the picture lightened the features of the man.

“I’m very glad to see you,” he said, in a tone that left no doubt of its genuine quality.

“Thank you,” Hodder replied, meeting his eye with kindness, yet with a scrutiny that sought to penetrate the secret of an unexpected cordiality.  “I, too, have hoped to see you.”

Alison, who stood by wondering, felt a meaning behind the rector’s words.  She pressed his hand as he bade her, once more, good night.

“Won’t you take my taxicab?” asked Preston.  “It is going down town anyway.”

“I think I’d better stick to the street cars,” Hodder said.  His refusal was not ungraceful, but firm.  Preston did not insist.

In spite of the events of that evening, which he went over again and again as the midnight car carried him eastward, in spite of a new-born happiness the actuality of which was still difficult to grasp, Hodder was vaguely troubled when he thought of Preston Parr.