“I didn’t suppose it was known,” answered the rector, in surprise.

“Constable told me.  I have reason to believe that he doesn’t sympathize with his wife in her attitude on this matter.  It’s pulled him down, —­you’ve noticed that he looks badly?”

“Yes,” said the rector.  He did not care to discuss the affair; he had hoped it would not become known; and he shunned the congratulations of Gordon Atterbury, which in such case would be inevitable.  And in spite of the conviction that he had done his duty, the memory of his talk with Mrs. Constable never failed to make him, uncomfortable.

Exasperation crept into Mr. Pares voice.

“I can’t think what’s got into women in these times—­at Mrs. Constable’s age they ought to know better.  Nothing restrains them.  They have reached a point where they don’t even respect the Church.  And when that happens, it is serious indeed.  The Church is the governor on our social engine, and it is supposed to impose a restraint upon the lawless.”

Hodder could not refrain from smiling a little at the banker’s conception.

“Doesn’t that reduce the Church somewhere to the level of the police force?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said Eldon Parr, whose feelings seemed to be rising.  “I am sorry for Constable.  He feels the shame of this thing keenly, and he ought to go away for a while to one of these quiet resorts.  I offered him my car.  Sometimes I think that women have no morals.  At any rate, this modern notion of giving them their liberty is sheer folly.  Look what they have done with it!  Instead of remaining at home, where they belong, they are going out into the world and turning it topsy-turvy.  And if a man doesn’t let them have a free hand, they get a divorce and marry some idiot who will.”

Mr. Parr pushed back his chair and rose abruptly, starting for the door.  The rector followed him, forcibly struck by the unusual bitterness in his tone.

“If I have spoken strongly, it is because I feel strongly,” he said in a strange, thickened voice.  “Hodder, how would you like to live in this house—­alone?”

The rector looked down upon him with keen, comprehending eyes, and saw Eldon Parr as he only, of all men, had seen him.  For he himself did not understand his own strange power of drawing forth the spirit from its shell, of compelling the inner, suffering thing to reveal itself.

“This poison,” Eldon Parr went on unevenly, “has eaten into my own family.  My daughter, who might have been a comfort and a companion, since she chose not to marry, was carried away by it, and thought it incumbent upon her to have a career of her own.  And now I have a choice of thirty rooms, and not a soul to share them with.  Sometimes, at night, I make up my mind to sell this house.  But I can’t do it—­something holds me back, hope, superstition, or whatever you’ve a mind to call it.  You’ve never seen all of the house, have you?” he asked.