His transformation was one of the signs, one of the mysteries of the times.  The ridicule and abuse of the press, the opposition and enmity of his childhood friends, had developed the man of force she now beheld, and who came forward to greet her.

“Alison!” he exclaimed.  He had changed in one sense, and not in another.  Her colour deepened as the sound of his voice brought back the lapsed memories of the old intimacy.  For she had been kind to him, kinder than to any other; and the news of his marriage—­to a woman from the Pacific coast—­had actually induced in her certain longings and regrets.  When the cards had reached her, New York and the excitement of the life into which she had been weakly, if somewhat unwittingly, drawn had already begun to pall.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she told him.  “I’ve heard—­so many things.  And I’m very much in sympathy with what you’re doing.”

They crossed the street, and walked away from the church together.  She had surprised him, and made him uncomfortable.

“You’ve been away so long,” he managed to say, “perhaps you do not realize—­”

“Oh, yes, I do,” she interrupted.  “I am on the other side, on your side.  I thought of writing you, when you nearly won last autumn.”

“You see it, too?” he exclaimed.

“Yes, I’ve changed, too.  Not so much as you,” she added, shyly.  “I always had a certain sympathy, you know, with the Robin Hoods.”

He laughed at her designation, both pleased and taken aback by her praise. . .  But he wondered if she knew the extent of his criticism of her father.

“That rector is a wonderful man,” he broke out, irrelevantly.  “I can’t get over’ him—­I can’t quite grasp the fact that he exists, that he has dared to do what he has done.”

This brought her colour back, but she faced him bravely.  You think he is wonderful, then?”

“Don’t you?” he demanded.

She assented.  “But I am curious to know why you do.  Somehow, I never thought of—­you—­”

“As religious,” he supplied.  “And you?  If I remember rightly—­”

“Yes,” she interrupted, “I revolted, too.  But Mr. Hodder puts it so —­it makes one wonder.”

“He has not only made me wonder,” declared Bedloe Hubbell, emphatically, “I never knew what religion was until I heard this man last Sunday.”

“Last Sunday!”

“Until then, I hadn’t been inside of a church for fifteen years,—­except to get married.  My wife takes the children, occasionally, to a Presbyterian church near us.”

“And why, did you go then?” she asked.

“I am a little ashamed of my motive,” he confessed.  “There were rumours —­I don’t pretend to know how they got about—­” he hesitated, once more aware of delicate ground.  “Wallis Plimpton said something to a man who told me.  I believe I went out of sheer curiosity to hear what Hodder would have to say.  And then, I had been reading, wondering whether there were anything in Christianity, after all.”