Hodder was silent.  The thought struck him with the force of a great wind.

“He’s a Pharisee,” Alison went on, following the train of her thought.  “I remember the first time I discovered that—­it was when I was reading the New Testament carefully, in the hope of finding something in Christianity I might take hold of.  And I was impressed particularly by the scorn with which Christ treated the Pharisees.  My father, too, if he had lived in those days, would have thought Christ a seditious person, an impractical, fanatical idealist, and would have tried to trip him up with literal questions concerning the law.  His real and primary interest—­is in a social system that benefits himself and his kind, and because this is so, he, and men like him, would have it appear that Christianity is on the side of what they term law and order.  I do not say that they are hypocritical, that they reason this out.  They are elemental; and they feel intuitively that Christianity contains a vital spark which, if allowed to fly, would start a conflagration beyond their control.  The theologians have helped them to cover the spark with ashes, and naturally they won’t allow the ashes to be touched, if they can help it.”

She lay very still.

The rector had listened to her, at first with amazement, then with more complicated sensations as she thus dispassionately discussed the foremost member of his congregation and the first layman of the diocese, who was incidentally her own father.  In her masterly analysis of Eldon Parr, she had brought Hodder face to face with the naked truth, and compelled him to recognize it.  How could he attempt to refute it, with honesty?

He remembered Mr. Parr’s criticism of Alison.  There had been hardness in that, though it were the cry of a lacerated paternal affection.  In that, too, a lack of comprehension, an impotent anger at a visitation not understood, a punishment apparently unmerited.  Hodder had pitied him then—­he still pitied him.  In the daughter’s voice was no trace of resentment.  No one, seemingly, could be farther removed from him (the rector of St. John’s) in her opinions and views of life, than Allison Parr; and yet he felt in her an undercurrent, deep and strong, which moved him strangely, strongly, irresistibly; he recognized a passionate desire for the truth, and the courage to face it at any cost, and a capacity for tenderness, revealed in flashes.

“I have hurt you,” she exclaimed.  “I am sorry.”

He collected himself.

“It is not you who have hurt me,” he replied.  “Reflections on the contradictions and imperfections of life are always painful.  And since I have been here, I have seen a great deal of your father.”

“You are fond of him!”

He hesitated.  It was not an ordinary conversation they were dealing with realities, and he had a sense that vital issues were at stake.  He had, in that moment, to make a revaluation of his sentiments for the financier—­to weigh the effect of her indictment.