There was a queer little pause.  He stood rather distressed and perplexed, because the talk had not gone quite as he had intended it to go.  It had deteriorated towards personal issues.  Phoebe broke the awkwardness by jumping up and coming to her father.  “Dear Daddy,” she said, and kissed him.

“We didn’t understand properly,” said Clementina, in the tone of one who explains away much—­that had never been spoken....

“Daddy,” said Miriam with an inspiration, “may I play something to you presently?”

“But the fire!” interjected Lady Ella, disposing of that idea.

“I want you to know, all of you, the faith I have,” he said.

Daphne had remained seated at the table.

“Are we never to go to church again?” she asked, as if at a loss.

(17)

Scrope went back into his little study.  He felt shy and awkward with his daughters now.  He felt it would be difficult to get back to usualness with them.  To-night it would be impossible.  To-morrow he must come down to breakfast as though their talk had never occurred....  In his rehearsal of this deliverance during his walk home he had spoken much more plainly of his sense of the coming of God to rule the world and end the long age of the warring nations and competing traders, and he had intended to speak with equal plainness of the passionate subordination of the individual life to this great common purpose of God and man, an aspect he had scarcely mentioned at all.  But in that little room, in the presence of those dear familiar people, those great horizons of life had vanished.  The room with its folding doors had fixed the scale.  The wallpaper had smothered the Kingdom of God; he had been, he felt, domestic; it had been an after-supper talk.  He had been put out, too, by the mention of Lady Sunderbund and the case of Chasters....

In his study he consoled himself for this diminution of his intention.  It had taken him five years, he reflected, to get to his present real sense of God’s presence and to his personal subordination to God’s purpose.  It had been a little absurd, he perceived, to expect these girls to leap at once to a complete understanding of the halting hints, the allusive indications of the thoughts that now possessed his soul.  He tried like some maiden speaker to recall exactly what it was he had said and what it was he had forgotten to say....  This was merely a beginning, merely a beginning.

After the girls had gone to bed, Lady Ella came to him and she was glowing and tender; she was in love again as she had not been since the shadow had first fallen between them.  “I was so glad you spoke to them,” she said.  “They had been puzzled.  But they are dear loyal girls.”

He tried to tell her rather more plainly what he felt about the whole question of religion in their lives, but eloquence had departed from him.

“You see, Ella, life cannot get out of tragedy—­and sordid tragedy—­until we bring about the Kingdom of God.  It’s no unreality that has made me come out of the church.”