Presently, the lawns began to grow brighter, the houses more cheerful, and the shops were left behind.  They crossed the third great transverse artery of the city (not so long ago, Mr. Parr remarked, a quagmire), now lined by hotels and stores with alluring displays in plate glass windows and entered a wide boulevard that stretched westward straight to the great Park.  This boulevard the financier recalled as a country road of clay.  It was bordered by a vivid strip, of green; a row of tall and graceful lamp posts, like sentinels, marked its course; while the dwellings, set far back on either side, were for the most part large and pretentious, betraying in their many tentative styles of architecture the reaching out of a commercial nation after beauty.  Some, indeed, were simple of line and restful to the trained eye.

They came to the wide entrance of the Park, so wisely preserved as a breathing place for future generations.  A slight haze had gathered over the rolling forests to the westward; but this haze was not smoke.  Here, in this enchanting region, the autumn sunlight was undiluted gold, the lawns, emerald, and the red gravel around the statesman’s statue glistening.  The automobile quickly swung into a street that skirted the Park,—­if street it might be called, for it was more like a generous private driveway,—­flanked on the right by fences of ornamental ironwork and high shrubbery that concealed the fore yards of dominating private residences which might:  without great exaggeration, have been called palaces.

“That’s Ferguson’s house,” volunteered Mr. Parr, indicating a marble edifice with countless windows.  “He’s one of your vestrymen, you know.  Ferguson’s Department Store.”  The banker’s eyes twinkled a little for the first time.  “You’ll probably find it convenient.  Most people do.  Clever business man, Ferguson.”

But the rector was finding difficulty in tabulating his impressions.

They turned in between two posts of a gateway toward a huge house of rough granite.  And Hodder wondered whether, in the swift onward roll of things, the time would come when this, too, would have been deemed ephemeral.  With its massive walls and heavy, red-tiled roof that sloped steeply to many points, it seemed firmly planted for ages to come.  It was surrounded, yet not hemmed in, by trees of a considerable age.  His host explained that these had belonged to the original farm of which all this Park Street property had made a part.

They alighted under a porte-cochere with a glass roof.

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Parr, as the doors swung open and he led the way into the house, “I’m sorry I can’t give you a more cheerful welcome, but my son and daughter, for their own reasons, see fit to live elsewhere.”

Hodder’s quick ear detected in the tone another cadence, and he glanced at Eldon Parr with a new interest . . . .