“I need not tell you you have made enemies—­powerful ones.  I can see that you are a man, and that you are prepared for them.  They will leave no stone unturned, will neglect no means to put you out and disgrace you.  They will be about your ears to-morrow—­this afternoon, perhaps.  I need not remind you that the outcome is doubtful.  But I came here to assure you of my friendship and support in all you hope to accomplish in making the Church what it should be.  In any event, what you have done to-day will be productive of everlasting good.”

In a corner still lingered the group which Mr. Bentley had joined.  And Hodder, as he made his way towards it, recognized the faces of some of those who composed it.  Sally Grower was there, and the young women who lived in Mr. Bentley’s house, and others whose acquaintance he had made during the summer.  Mrs. Garvin had brought little Dicky, incredibly changed from the wan little figure he had first beheld in the stifling back room in Dalton Street; not yet robust, but freckled and tanned by the country sun and wind.  The child, whom he had seen constantly in the interval, ran forward joyfully, and Hodder bent down to take his hand....

These were his friends, emblematic of the new relationship in which he stood to mankind.  And he owed them to Horace Bentley!  He wondered, as he greeted them, whether they knew what their allegiance meant to him in this hour.  But it sufficed that they claimed him as their own.

Behind them all stood Kate Marcy.  And it struck him for the first time, as he gazed at her earnestly, how her appearance had changed.  She gave him a frightened, bewildered look, as though she were unable to identify him now with the man she had known in the Dalton Street flat, in the restaurant.  She was still struggling, groping, wondering, striving to accustom herself to the higher light of another world.

“I wanted to come,” she faltered.  “Sally Grower brought me. . . "

Hodder went back with them to Dalton Street.  His new ministry had begun.  And on this, the first day of it, it was fitting that he should sit at the table of Horace Bentley, even as on that other Sunday, two years agone, he had gone to the home of the first layman of the diocese, Eldon Parr.

III

The peace of God passes understanding because sorrow and joy are mingled therein, sorrow and joy and striving.  And thus the joy of emancipation may be accompanied by a heavy heart.  The next morning, when Hodder entered his study, he sighed as his eye fell upon the unusual pile of letters on his desk, for their writers had once been his friends.  The inevitable breach had come at last.