II

The moment was at hand. September had waned, the nights were cooling,
his parishioners were returning from the East. One of these was Eleanor
Goodrich, whom he met on a corner, tanned and revived from her long
summer in Massachusetts. She had inherited the kindly shrewdness of
glance characteristic of gentlefolk, the glance that seeks to penetrate
externals in its concern for the well-being of those whom it scrutinizes.
And he was subtly aware, though she greeted him cordially, that she felt
a change in him without being able to account for it.

"I hear you have been here all summer," she said reproachfully. "Mother
and father and all of us were much disappointed that you did not come to
us on the Cape."

"I should have come, if it had been possible," he replied. "It seems to
have done you a world of good."

"Oh, I!" She seemed slightly embarrassed, puzzled, and did not look at
him. "I am burned as disgracefully as Evelyn. Phil came on for a month.

"He tells me he hasn't seen you, but that isn't surprising, for he hasn't
been to church since June--and he's a vestryman now, too."

She was in mourning for her father-in-law, who had died in the spring.
Phil Goodrich had taken his place. Eleanor found the conversation,
somehow, drifting out of her control. It was not at all what she would
have desired to say. Her colour heightened.

"I have not been conducting the services, but I resume them next Sunday,"