back room in Dalton Street; not yet robust, but freckled and tanned by
the country sun and wind. The child, whom he had seen constantly in the
interval, ran forward joyfully, and Hodder bent down to take his hand....

These were his friends, emblematic of the new relationship in which he
stood to mankind. And he owed them to Horace Bentley! He wondered, as
he greeted them, whether they knew what their allegiance meant to him in
this hour. But it sufficed that they claimed him as their own.

Behind them all stood Kate Marcy. And it struck him for the first time,
as he gazed at her earnestly, how her appearance had changed. She gave
him a frightened, bewildered look, as though she were unable to identify
him now with the man she had known in the Dalton Street flat, in the
restaurant. She was still struggling, groping, wondering, striving to
accustom herself to the higher light of another world.

"I wanted to come," she faltered. "Sally Grower brought me. . . "

Hodder went back with them to Dalton Street. His new ministry had begun.
And on this, the first day of it, it was fitting that he should sit at
the table of Horace Bentley, even as on that other Sunday, two years
agone, he had gone to the home of the first layman of the diocese,
Eldon Parr.



III

The peace of God passes understanding because sorrow and joy are mingled
therein, sorrow and joy and striving. And thus the joy of emancipation