BISHOP.  Perhaps your voice is not quite so clear as it was. 
However . . .

[He wipes the inside of the ear-trumpet, and fixes it afresh.]

Now!  Tell me about your church.

[During the following speech the BISHOP is occupied with his own thoughts:  after the first few words he makes no attempt at listening:  indeed, the trumpet goes down to the table again in no time.  On the other hand, ROBERT, at first apathetic, gradually awakens to the keenest interest in what MANSON says.]

MANSON [very simply].  I am afraid you may not consider it an altogether substantial concern.  It has to be seen in a certain way, under certain conditions.  Some people never see it at all.  You must understand, this is no dead pile of stones and unmeaning timber. It is a living thing.

BISHOP [in a hoarse whisper, self-engrossed].  Numberless millions!

MANSON.  When you enter it you hear a sound—­a sound as of some mighty poem chanted.  Listen long enough, and you will learn that it is made up of the beating of human hearts, of the nameless music of men’s souls—­that is, if you have ears.  If you have eyes, you will presently see the church itself—­a looming mystery of many shapes and shadows, leaping sheer from floor to dome.  The work of no ordinary builder!

BISHOP [trumpet down].  On the security of one man’s name!

MANSON.  The pillars of it go up like the brawny trunks of heroes:  the sweet human flesh of men and women is moulded about its bulwarks, strong, impregnable:  the faces of little children laugh out from every corner-stone:  the terrible spans and arches of it are the joined hands of comrades; and up in the heights and spaces there are inscribed the numberless musings of all the dreamers of the world.  It is yet building—­building and built upon.  Sometimes the work goes forward in deep darkness:  sometimes in blinding light:  now beneath the burden of unutterable anguish:  now to the tune of a great laughter and heroic shoutings like the cry of thunder. [Softer.] Sometimes, in the silence of the night-time, one may hear the tiny hammerings of the comrades at work up in the dome—­the comrades that have climbed ahead.

[There is a short silence, broken only by the champing jaws of the BISHOP, who has resumed his sausages.  ROBERT speaks first.]

ROBERT [slowly].  I think I begin to understand you, comride:  especially that bit abaht . . . [his eyes stray upwards] . . . the ‘ammerins’ an’ the—­the harches—­an’ . . .  Humph!  I’m only an ’og! . . .

S’pose there’s no drain ‘ands wanted in that there church o’ yours?

MANSON.  Drains are a very important question there at present.

ROBERT.  Why, I’d be cussin’ over every stinkin’ pipe I laid.

MANSON.  I should make that a condition, comrade.

ROBERT [rising, he pulls off the cassock; goes to fire for his coat:  returns:  drags it on].  I don’t know!  Things ‘av’ got in a bit of a muck with me!  I’m rather like a drain-pipe myself.