When they had reached the pavement she asked him where they were going.

“To see a friend of mine, and a friend of yours,” he told her.  “He does net live far from here.”

She was silent again, acquiescing.  The rain had stopped, the sun was peeping out furtively through the clouds, the early loiterers in Dalton Street stared at them curiously.  But Hodder was thinking of that house whither they were bound with a new gratitude, a new wonder that it should exist.  Thus they came to the sheltered vestibule with its glistening white paint, its polished name plate and doorknob.  The grinning, hospitable darky appeared in answer to the rector’s ring.

“Good morning, Sam,” he said; “is Mr. Bentley in?”

Sam ushered them ceremoniously into the library, and gate Marcy gazed about her with awe, as at something absolutely foreign to her experience:  the New Barrington Hotel, the latest pride of the city, recently erected at the corner of Tower and Jefferson and furnished in the French style, she might partially have understood.  Had she been marvellously and suddenly transported and established there, existence might still have evinced a certain continuity.  But this house! . .

Mr. Bentley rose from the desk in the corner.

“Oh, it’s you, Hodder,” he said cheerfully, laying his hand on the rector’s arm.  “I was just thinking about you.”

“This is Miss Marcy, Mr. Bentley,” Hodder said.

Mr. Bentley took her hand and led her to a chair.

“Mr. Hodder knows how fond I am of young women,” he said.  “I have six of them upstairs,—­so I am never lonely.”

Mr. Bentley did not appear to notice that her lips quivered.

Hodder turned his eyes from her face.  “Miss Marcy has been lonely,” he explained, “and I thought we might get her a room near by, where she might see them often.  She is going to do embroidery.”

“Why, Sally will know of a room,” Mr. Bentley replied.  “Sam!” he called.

“Yessah—­yes, Mistah Ho’ace.”  Sam appeared at the door.

“Ask Miss Sally to come down, if she’s not busy.”

Kate Marcy sat dumbly in her chair, her hands convulsively clasping its arms, her breast heaving stormily, her face becoming intense with the effort of repressing the wild emotion within her:  emotion that threatened to strangle her if resisted, or to sweep her out like a tide and drown her in deep waters:  emotion that had no one mewing, and yet summed up a life, mysteriously and overwhelmingly aroused by the sight of a room, and of a kindly old gentleman who lived in it!

Mr. Bentley took the chair beside her.