But the war brought it down.  Before the war such a lot of things in England and Europe seemed like a comedy or a farce, a bad joke that one tolerated.  One tried half consciously, half avoiding the knowledge of what one was doing, to keep one’s own little circle and life civilized.  The war shook all those ideas of isolation, all that sort of evasion, down.  The world is the rightful kingdom of God; we had left its affairs to kings and emperors and suchlike impostors, to priests and profit-seekers and greedy men.  We were genteel condoners.  The war has ended that.  It thrusts into all our lives.  It brings death so close—­A fortnight ago twenty-seven people were killed and injured within a mile of this by Zeppelin bombs....  Every one loses some one....  Because through all that time men like myself were going through our priestly mummeries, abasing ourselves to kings and politicians, when we ought to have been crying out:  ’No!  No!  There is no righteousness in the world, there is no right government, except it be the kingdom of God.’”

He paused and looked at them.  They were all listening to him now.  But he was still haunted by a dread of preaching in his own family.  He dropped to the conversational note again.

“You see what I had in mind.  I saw I must come out of this, and preach the kingdom of God.  That was my idea.  I don’t want to force it upon you, but I want you to understand why I acted as I did.  But let me come to the particular thing that has happened to-day.  I did not think when I made my final decision to leave the church that it meant such poverty as this we are living in—­permanently.  That is what I want to make clear to you.  I thought there would be a temporary dip into dinginess, but that was all.  There was a plan; at the time it seemed a right and reasonable plan; for setting up a chapel in London, a very plain and simple undenominational chapel, for the simple preaching of the world kingdom of God.  There was some one who seemed prepared to meet all the immediate demands for such a chapel.”

“Was it Lady Sunderbund?” asked Clementina.

Scrope was pulled up abruptly.  “Yes,” he said.  “It seemed at first a quite hopeful project.”

“We’d have hated that,” said Clementina, with a glance as if for assent, at her mother.  “We should all have hated that.”

“Anyhow it has fallen through.”

“We don’t mind that,” said Clementina, and Daphne echoed her words.

“I don’t see that there is any necessity to import this note of—­hostility to Lady Sunderbund into this matter.”  He addressed himself rather more definitely to Lady Ella.  “She’s a woman of a very extraordinary character, highly emotional, energetic, generous to an extraordinary extent....”

Daphne made a little noise like a comment.

A faint acerbity in her father’s voice responded.