He was a nice-looking young man, with firm white teeth, and honesty was written all over his boyish face.  And the palpable fact that his regret was more on the clergyman’s account than for the social faux pas drew Holder the more, since it bespoke a genuineness of character.

He did not see the yearning in the rector’s eyes as he turned away. . .  Why was it they could not be standing side by side, fighting the same fight?  The Church had lost him, and thousands like him, and she needed them; could not, indeed, do without them.

Where, indeed, were the young men?  They did not bother their heads about spiritual matters any more.  But were they not, he asked himself, franker than many of these others, the so-called pillars of the spiritual structure?

Mr. Plimpton accosted him.  “I congratulate you upon the new plans, Mr. Hodder,—­they’re great,” he said.  “Mr. Parr and our host are coming down handsomely, eh?  When we get the new settlement house we’ll have a plant as up-to-date as any church in the country.  When do you break ground?”

“Not until autumn, I believe,” Hodder replied.  “There are a good many details to decide upon yet.”

“Well, I congratulate you.”

Mr. Plimpton was forever congratulating.

“Up-to-date”—­“plant”!  More illuminating words, eloquent of Mr. Plimpton’s ideals.  St. John’s down at the heels, to be brought up to the state of efficiency of Mr. Plimpton’s trust company!  It was by no means the first time he had heard modern attributes on Mr. Plimpton’s lips applied to a sacred institution, but to-night they had a profoundly disquieting effect.  To-night, a certain clairvoyance had been vouchsafed him, and he beheld these men, his associates and supporters, with a detachment never before achieved.

They settled in groups about the room, which was square and high, and panelled in Italian walnut, with fluted pilasters,—­the capitals of which were elaborately carved.  And Hodder found himself on a deep leather sofa in a corner engaged in a desultory and automatic conversation with Everett Constable.  Mr. Plimpton, with a large cigar between his lips, was the radiating centre of one of the liveliest groups, and of him the rector had fallen into a consideration, piecing together bits of information that hitherto had floated meaninglessly in his mind.  It was Mrs. Larrabbee who had given character to the career of the still comparatively youthful and unquestionably energetic president of the Chamber of Commerce by likening it to a great spiral, starting somewhere in outer regions of twilight, and gradually drawing nearer to the centre, from which he had never taken his eyes.  At the centre were Eldon Parr and Charlotte Gore.  Wallis Plimpton had made himself indispensable to both.