He reread it twice, pondering over its phrases.  “A new point of view.... at a time when I needed it desperately.”  It was not until then that he realized the full intensity of his desire for some expression from her since the moment he had caught sight of her in the church.  But he had not been prepared for the unreserve, the impulsiveness with which she had actually written.  Such was his agitation that he did not heed, at first, a knock on the door, which was repeated.  He thrust the letter inside his coat as the janitor of the parish house appeared.

“There is a gentleman to see you, sir, in the office,” he said.

Hodder went down the stairs.  And he anticipated, from the light yet nervous pacing that he heard on the bare floor, that the visitor was none other than his vestryman, Mr. Gordon Atterbury.  The sight of the gentleman’s spruce figure confirmed the guess.

“Good morning, Mr. Atterbury,” he said as he entered.

Mr. Atterbury stopped in his steps, as if he had heard a shot.

“Ah—­good morning, Mr. Hodder.  I stopped in on my way to the office.”

“Sit down,” said the rector.

Mr. Atterbury sat down, but with the air of a man who does so under protest, who had not intended to.  He was visibly filled and almost quivering with an excitement which seemed to demand active expression, and which the tall clergyman’s physical calm and self-possession seemed to augment.  For a moment Mr. Atterbury stared at the rector as he sat behind his desk.  Then he cleared his throat.

“I thought of writing to you, Mr. Hodder.  My mother, I believe, has done so.  But it seemed to me, on second thought, better to come to you direct.”

The rector nodded, without venturing to remark on the wisdom of the course.

“It occurred to me,” Mr. Atterbury went on, “that possibly some things I wish to discuss might—­ahem be dispelled in a conversation.  That I might conceivably have misunderstood certain statements in your sermon of yesterday.”

“I tried,” said the rector, “to be as clear as possible.”

“I thought you might not fully have realized the effect of what you said.  I ought to tell you, I think, that as soon as I reached home I wrote out, as accurately as I could from memory, the gist of your remarks.  And I must say frankly, although I try to put it mildly, that they appear to contradict and controvert the doctrines of the Church.”

“Which doctrines?” Hodder asked.

Gordon Atterbury sputtered.

“Which doctrines?” he repeated.  “Can it be possible that you misunderstand me?  I might refer you to those which you yourself preached as late as last June, in a sermon which was one of the finest and most scholarly efforts I ever heard.”

“It was on that day, Mr. Atterbury,” replied the rector, with a touch of sadness in his voice, “I made the discovery that fine and scholarly efforts were not Christianity.”