--if resignation it were, for the self-contained assistant continued to be
an enigma; and it was not without compunction that he left, about the
middle of July, on his own vacation. He was tired, and yet he seemed to
have accomplished nothing in this first year of the city parish whereof
he had dreamed. And it was, no doubt, for that very reason that he was
conscious of a depressing exhaustion as his train rolled eastward over
that same high bridge that spanned the hot and muddy waters of the river.
He felt a fugitive. In no months since he had left the theological
seminary, had he seemingly accomplished so little; in no months had he
had so magnificent an opportunity.

After he had reached the peaceful hills at Bremerton--where he had gone
on Mrs. Whitely's invitation--he began to look back upon the spring and
winter as a kind of mad nightmare, a period of ceaseless, distracted,
and dissipated activity, of rushing hither and thither with no results.
He had been aware of invisible barriers, restricting, hemming him in on
all sides. There had been no time for reflection; and now that he had a
breathing space, he was unable to see how he might reorganize his work in
order to make it more efficient.

There were other perplexities, brought about by the glimpses he had had
into the lives and beliefs--or rather unbeliefs--of his new parishioners.
And sometimes, in an unwonted moment of pessimism, he asked himself why
they thought it necessary to keep all that machinery going when it had so
little apparent effect on their lives? He sat wistfully in the chancel
of the little Bremerton church and looked into the familiar faces of
those he had found in it when he came to it, and of those he had brought
into it, wondering why he had been foolish enough to think himself
endowed for the larger work. Here, he had been a factor, a force in the
community, had entered into its life and affections. What was he there?