Hodder himself had but glanced at a few of them, and to do him justice this abstention had not had its root in cowardice.  His life was full —­his religion “worked.”  And the conditions with which these books dealt simply did not exist for him.  The fact that there were other churches in the town less successful than his own (one or two, indeed, virtually starving) he had found it simple to account for in that their denominations had abandoned the true conception of the Church, and were logically degenerating into atrophy.  What better proof of the barrenness of these modern philosophical and religious books did he need than the spectacle of other ministers—­who tarried awhile on starvation salaries —­reading them and preaching from them?

He, John Hodder, had held fast to the essential efficacy of the word of God as propounded in past ages by the Fathers.  It is only fair to add that he did so without pride or bigotry, and with a sense of thankfulness at the simplicity of the solution (ancient, in truth!) which, apparently by special grace, had been vouchsafed him.  And to it he attributed the flourishing condition in which he had left the Church of the Ascension at Bremerton.

“We’ll never get another rector like you,” Alice Whitely had exclaimed, with tears in her eyes, as she bade him good-by.  And he had rebuked her.  Others had spoken in a similar strain, and it is a certain tribute to his character to record that the underlying hint had been lost on Hodder.  His efficacy, he insisted, lay in the Word.

Hodder looked at his watch, only to be reminded poignantly of the chief cause of his heaviness of spirit, for it represented concretely the affections of those whom he had left behind; brought before him vividly the purple haze of the Bremerton valley, and the garden party, in the ample Whitely grounds, which was their tribute to him.  And he beheld, moving from the sunlight to shadow, the figure of Rachel Ogden.  She might have been with him now, speeding by his side into the larger life!

In his loneliness, he seemed to be gazing into reproachful eyes.  Nothing had passed between them.  It, was he who had held back, a fact that in the retrospect caused him some amazement.  For, if wifehood were to be regarded as a profession, Rachel Ogden had every qualification.  And Mrs. Whitely’s skilful suggestions had on occasions almost brought him to believe in the reality of the mirage,—­never quite.

Orthodox though he were, there had been times when his humour had borne him upward toward higher truths, and he had once remarked that promising to love forever was like promising to become President of the United States.

One might achieve it, but it was independent of the will.  Hodder’s ideals—­if he had only known—­transcended the rubric.  His feeling for Rachel Ogden had not been lacking in tenderness, and yet he had recoiled from marriage merely for the sake of getting a wife, albeit one with easy qualification.  He shrank instinctively from the humdrum, and sought the heights, stormy though these might prove.  As yet he had not analyzed this craving.