physician, who find something to love, something to pity, and nothing to
fear--thus reversing the sentiments of the public.

Yet the friendship between John Hodder and Eldon Parr defied any definite
analysis on the rector's part, and was perhaps the strangest--and most
disquieting element that had as yet come into Hodder's life. The nature
of his intimacy with the banker, if intimacy it might be called, might
have surprised his other parishioners if they could have been hidden
spectators of one of these dinners. There were long silences when the
medium of communication, tenuous at best, seemed to snap, and the two sat
gazing at each other as from mountain peaks across impassable valleys.
With all the will in the world, their souls lost touch, though the sense
in the clergyman of the other's vague yearning for human companionship
was never absent. It was this yearning that attracted Hodder, who found
in it a deep pathos.

After one of these intervals of silence, Eldon Parr looked up from his
claret.

"I congratulate you, Hodder, on the stand you took in regard to
Constable's daughter," he said.

"I didn't suppose it was known," answered the rector, in surprise.

"Constable told me. I have reason to believe that he doesn't sympathize
with his wife in her attitude on this matter. It's pulled him down,
--you've noticed that he looks badly?"

"Yes," said the rector. He did not care to discuss the affair; he had
hoped it would not become known; and he shunned the congratulations of