A curious subtlety crossed the cameo clearness of the Bishop’s face, “But do you not feel that perhaps the need for your activity might be even greater later on?” “You mean--,” Newbold faltered, for simple folk like the Bishop were hard to fathom sometimes, even after twenty years of study. The Bishop’s smile showed, disarming, “I mean simply, lad--if I may call you that sometimes, on Christmas, say,--that the diocese can’t afford to have you break down. It needs, and will need you, too much for that. Therefore,--let the diocese take care of itself a little while.” “It’s been doing that too long,” the other broke forth, with the brutality of overwrought nerves. A shadow passed over the Bishop’s clear, gray face. Quick words caught with odd puckering upon his lips. He leaned his silver head against the high, dark chairback, long silent. “Is it really so bad as that, Newbold?” he asked at last. “What is it that is wrong?” “Our finances, for one thing. The treasurer’s last report--” “There must be finances, I suppose.” The other smiled his cynical, twitching smile, “If there’s to be a church at all there must be finances.” He spoke with the irritation belonging to many a former discussion. The Bishop’s inscrutable gaze rested long upon the Rector. “You are thinking, and rightly, that I am saved much because I have good laborers in the field to count the sheaves and the shekels? Believe me, Newbold, I know the value of your work to the diocese and I am sorry for the weariness of it.” The other’s face cleared in still uneasy relief. “I do not feel that I can withdraw from any office in the diocese, in the church, however small my service.” “It is not small. You are the most prominent man in the diocese. The most active. The most influential.” The other flushed with pleasure, yet regarded his guest enigmatically. “Those are cheering words, Bishop, for a day like this, of discouragement and--of pain.” His hand went to the throbbing disc at the back of his neck, as he added abruptly, “If what you say is true, Bishop, I am perhaps paying the price.” “I am afraid,” answered the Bishop gently, “that you are.” “One doesn’t expect the strings to snap at forty-five!” Newbold said querulously. “I could have swung a sledge once! I could still! Yet--it makes me wonder--I have wondered lately--what is the secret of your vitality, Bishop.” The flicker of a smile on the Bishop’s lips, “Yet I had thought, Newbold, that you did not think so highly of my vitality--that you thought it an ebbing flood, a year or two ago.” The other flushed to the brow. “It was for your own sake, Bishop, to save you the wear and tear of constant travel, constant work, that I urged upon the convention the election of a coadjutor.” “I wish you had done it not merely for my sake, but for the sake of the diocese and of the church.” “It was for that, too,” Newbold murmured.