she responded with round blue eyes of wonder.

"At the utmost the Church of England is a tabernacle on a road."

"A 'oad that goes whe'?" she rhetorized.

"Exactly," said the bishop, and put down his cup.

"You see, my dear Lady Sunderbund," he resumed, "I am exactly in the
same position of that man at the door."

She quoted aptly and softly: "The wo'ld was all befo' them whe' to
choose."

He was struck by the aptness of the words.

"I feel I have to come right out into the bare truth. What exactly then
do I become? Do I lose my priestly function because I discover how great
God is? But what am I to do?"

He opened a new layer of his thoughts to her.

"There is a saying," he remarked, "once a priest, always a priest. I
cannot imagine myself as other than what I am."

"But o'thodox no maw," she said.

"Orthodox--self-satisfied, no longer. A priest who seeks, an exploring
priest."

"In a Chu'ch of P'og'ess and B'othe'hood," she carried him on.

"At any rate, in a progressive and learning church."

She flashed and glowed assent.

"I have been haunted," he said, "by those words spoken at Athens. 'Whom
therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.' That comes
to me with an effect of--guidance is an old-fashioned word--shall I
say suggestion? To stand by the altar bearing strange names and ancient
symbols, speaking plainly to all mankind of the one true God--!"

(4)

He did not get much beyond this point at the time, though he remained
talking with Lady Sunderbund for nearly an hour longer. The rest was
merely a beating out of what had already been said. But insensibly she
renewed her original charm, and as he became accustomed to her he forgot
a certain artificiality in her manner and the extreme modernity of her
costume and furniture. She was a wonderful listener; nobody else could
have helped him to expression in quite the same way, and when he left
her he felt that now he was capable of stating his case in a coherent
and acceptable form to almost any intelligent hearer. He had a point of
view now that was no longer embarrassed by the immediate golden
presence of God; he was no longer dazzled nor ecstatic; his problem had
diminished to the scale of any other great human problem, to the scale
of political problems and problems of integrity and moral principle,
problems about which there is no such urgency as there is about a house
on fire, for example.

And now the desire for expression w