back. He realized for the first time that he had been nearer
annihilation then than to-day.

"Grace isn't here to bother me with the ideas she has picked up in Europe
and catalogued," Alison continued.

"Catalogued!" Hodder exclaimed, struck by the pertinency of the word.

"Yes. Did you ever know anybody who had succeeded half so well in
piecing together and absorbing into a harmonized whole all the divergent,
artificial elements that enter into the conventional world to-day? Her
character might be called a triumph of synthesis. For she has actually
achieved an individuality--that is what always surprises me when I think
of her. She has put the puzzle picture together, she has become a
person."

He remembered, with a start, that this was the exact word Mrs. Larrabbee
had used about Alison Parr. If he had searched the world, he could not
have found a greater contrast than that between these two women. And
when she spoke again, he was to be further struck by her power of logical
insight.

"Grace wants me because she thinks I have become the fashion--for the
same reason that Charlotte Plimpton wants me. Only there is this
difference--Grace will know the exact value of what I shall have done.
Not that she thinks me a Le Notre"--Alison laughed--"What I mean is, she
sees behind, she sees why it is fashionable to have a garden, since she
has worked out the values of that existence. But there!" Alison added,
with a provocative touch that did not escape him, "I am picking your
parishioners to pieces again."