“Oh, but you are intimate!” Mrs. Plimpton protested. “Everybody says so--that Mr. Parr sends for you all the time. What is he like when he's alone, and relaxed? Is he ever relaxed?” The lady had a habit of not waiting for answers to her questions. “Do you know, it stirs my imagination tremendously when I think of all the power that man has. I suppose you know he has become one of a very small group of men who control this country, and naturally he has been cruelly maligned. All he has to do is to say a word to his secretary, and he can make men or ruin them. It isn't that he does ruin them--I don't mean that. He uses his wealth, Wallis says, to maintain the prosperity of the nation! He feels his trusteeship. And he is so generous! He has given a great deal to the church, and now,” she added, “I am sure he will give more.” Hodder was appalled. He felt helpless before the weight of this onslaught. “I dare say he will continue to assist, as he has in the past,” he managed to say. “Of course it's your disinterestedness,” she proclaimed, examining him frankly. “He feels that you don't want anything. You always strike me as so splendidly impartial, Mr. Hodder.” Fortunately, he was spared an answer. Mr. Plimpton, who was wont to apply his gifts as a toastmaster to his own festivals, hailed him from the other end of the table. And Nelson Langmaid, who had fallen into the habit of dropping into Hodder's rooms in the parish house on his way uptown for a chat about books, had been struck by the rector's friendship with the banker. “I don't understand how you managed it, Hodder, in such a short time,” he declared. “Mr. Parr's a difficult man. In all these years, I've been closer to him than any one else, and I don't know him today half as well as you do.” “I didn't manage it,” said Hodder, briefly. “Well,” replied the lawyer, quizzically, “you needn't eat me up. I'm sure you didn't do it on purpose. If you had,--to use a Hibernian phrase,--you never would have done it. I've seen it tried before. To tell you the truth, after I'd come back from Bremerton, that was the one thing I was afraid of--that you mightn't get along with him.” Hodder himself was at a loss to account for the relationship. It troubled him vaguely, for Mr. Parr was the aggressor; and often at dusk, when Hodder was working under his study lamp, the telephone would ring, and on taking down the receiver he would hear the banker's voice. “I'm alone to-night, Mr. Hodder. Will you come and have dinner with me?” Had he known it, this was a different method of communication than that which the financier usually employed, one which should have flattered him. If Wallis Plimpton, for instance, had received such a personal message, the fact would not have remained unknown the next day at his club. Sometimes it was impossible for Hodder to go, and he said so; but he always went when he could.