“Thank you,” he returned.
They were talking mechanically. In them was an inexpressible sadness. They had come so near, and yet they were so far apart. Moreover, they knew that there was no chance of change. It was a matter of conscience which came between them, and it was a divergence which would widen with the years. And yet they loved. They mutually knew it, and it was because of that love that they must stay apart.
CHAPTER XXXV
A VESTRY MEETING
There was a strained atmosphere in the vestry meeting from the first. Every member present felt the tension from the moment old Joseph G. Clark walked in with Chisholm. They did not even nod to the Reverend Smith Boyd, but took their seats solidly in their customary places at the table, Clark, shielding his eyes, as was his wont, against the light which streamed on him from the red robe of the Good Shepherd. The repression was apparent, too, in the Reverend Smith Boyd, who rose to address his vestrymen as soon as the late-comers arrived.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “I wish to speak to you as the treasury committee, rather than as vestrymen, for it is in the former capacity which you always attend. I am advised that we have been paid for Vedder Court.”
Chisholm, to whom he directed a gaze of inquiry, nodded his head.
“It’s in the Majestic,” he stated. “I have plans for its investment, which I wish to lay before the committee.”
“I shall lay my own before them at the same time,” went on the rector. “I wish, however, to preface these plans by the statement that I have, so far as I am concerned, relinquished all thought of building the new cathedral.”
Nicholas Van Ploon, who had been much troubled of late, brightened, and nodded his round head emphatically.
“That’s what I say,” he declared.