“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 was running strong.  He wanted to state his situation; if he did not state he would have to act; and as he walked back to the club dinner he turned over possible interlocutors in his thoughts.  Lord Rampound sat with him at dinner, and he came near broaching the subject with him.  But Lord Rampound that evening had that morbid running of bluish legal anecdotes which is so common an affliction with lawyers, and theology sinks and dies in that turbid stream.

But as he lay in bed that night he thought of his old friend and helper Bishop Likeman, and it was borne in upon him that he should consult him.  And this he did next day.

Since the days when the bishop had been only plain Mr. Scrope, the youngest and most helpful of Likeman’s historical band of curates, their friendship had continued.  Likeman had been a second father to him; in particular his tact and helpfulness had shone during those days of doubt and anxiety when dear old Queen Victoria, God’s representative on earth, had obstinately refused, at the eleventh hour, to make him a bishop.  She had those pigheaded fits, and she was touchy about the bishops.  She had liked Scrope on account of the excellence of his German pronunciation, but she had been irritated by newspaper paragraphs—­nobody could ever find out who wrote them and nobody could ever find out who showed them to the old lady—­anticipating his elevation.  She had gone very red in the face and stiffened in the Guelphic manner whenever Scrope was mentioned, and so a rich harvest of spiritual life had remained untilled for some months.  Likeman had brought her round.