His wife became as it were the representative of all that held him
helpless. She and he had never kept secret from one another any plan of
action, any motive, that affected the other. It was clear to him that
any movement towards the disavowal of doctrinal Christianity and the
renunciation of his see must be first discussed with her. He must tell
her before he told the world.

And he could not imagine his telling her except as an incredibly
shattering act.

So he left things from day to day, and went about his episcopal
routines. He preached and delivered addresses in such phrases as he knew
people expected, and wondered profoundly why it was that it should be
impossible for him to discuss theological points with Lady Ella. And one
afternoon he went for a walk with Eleanor along the banks of the Prin,
and found himself, in response to certain openings of hers, talking to
her in almost exactly the same terms as Likeman had used to him.

Then suddenly the problem of this theological eclaircissement was
complicated in an unexpected fashion.

He had just been taking his Every Second Thursday Talk with Diocesan
Men Helpers. He had been trying to be plain and simple upon the needless
narrowness of enthusiastic laymen. He was still in the Bishop Andrews
cap and purple cassock he affected on these occasions; the Men Helpers
loved purple; and he was disentangling himself from two or three
resolute bores--for our loyal laymen can be at times quite superlative
bores--when Miriam came to him.

"Mummy says, 'Come to the drawing-room if you can.' There is a Lady
Sunderbund who seems particularly to want to see you."

He hesitated for a moment, and then decided that this was a conversation
he ought to control.

He found Lady Sunderbund looking very tall and radiantly beautiful in
a sheathlike dress of bright crimson trimmed with snow-white fur and a
white fur toque. She held out a long white-gloved hand to him and
cried in a tone of comradeship and profound understanding: "I've come,
Bishop!"

"You've come to see me?" he said without any sincerity in his polite
pleasure.

"I've come to P'inchesta to stay!" she cried with a bright triumphant
rising note.

She evidently considered Lady Ella a mere conversational stop-gap, to
be dropped now that the real business could be commenced. She turned
her pretty profile to that lady, and obliged the bishop with a compact
summary of all that had preceded his arrival. "I have been tel