“The carnival mood,” she repeated thoughtfully, “yes, that expresses it.  We are light, we are always trying to get away from ourselves, and sometimes I wonder whether there are any selves to get away from.  You ought to atop us,” she added, almost accusingly, “to bring us to our senses.”

“That’s just it,” he agreed, “why don’t we?  Why can’t we?”

“If more clergymen were like you, I think perhaps you might.”

His tone, his expression, were revelations.

“I—!” he exclaimed sharply, and controlled himself.  But in that moment Grace Larrabbee had a glimpse of the man who had come to arouse in her an intense curiosity.  For an instant a tongue of the fires of Vulcan had shot forth, fires that she had suspected.

“Aren’t you too ambitious?” she asked gently.  And again, although she did not often blunder, she saw him wince.  “I don’t mean ambitious for yourself.  But surely you have made a remarkable beginning at St. John’s.  Everybody admires and respects you, has confidence in you.  You are so sure of yourself,” she hesitated a moment, for she had never ventured to discuss religion with him, “of your faith.  Clergymen ought not to be apologetic, and your conviction cannot fail, in the long run, to have its effect.”

“Its effect,—­on what?” he asked.

Mrs. Larrabbee was suddenly, at sea.  And she prided herself on a lack of that vagueness generally attributed to her sex.

“On—­on everything.  On what we were talking about,—­the carnival feeling, the levity, on the unbelief of the age.  Isn’t it because the control has been taken off?”

He saw an opportunity to slip into smoother waters.

“The engine has lost its governor?”

“Exactly!” cried Mrs. Larrabbee.  “What a clever simile!”

“It is Mr. Pares,” said Hodder.  “Only he was speaking of other symptoms, Socialism, and its opposite, individualism,—­not carnivalism.”

“Poor man,” said Mrs. Larrabbee, accepting the new ground as safer, yet with a baffled feeling that Hodder had evaded her once more, “he has had his share of individualism and carnivalism.  His son Preston was here last month, and was taken out to the yacht every night in an unspeakable state.  And Alison hasn’t been what might be called a blessing.”

“She must be unusual,” said the rector, musingly.

“Oh, Alison is a Person.  She has become quite the fashion, and has more work than she can possibly attend to.  Very few women with her good looks could have done what she has without severe criticism, and something worse, perhaps.  The most extraordinary thing about her is her contempt for what her father has gained, and for conventionalities.  It always amuses me when I think that she might have been the wife of Gordon Atterbury.  The Goddess of Liberty linked to—­what?”

Hodder thought instinctively of the Church.  But he remained silent.