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 telling Lady Ella,” she said, “I’ve taken a house, fu’nitua and all!  Hea.  In P’inchesta!  I’ve made up my mind to sit unda you—­as they say in Clapham.  I’ve come ‘ight down he’ fo’ good.  I’ve taken a little house—­oh! a sweet little house that will be all over ’oses next month.  I’m living f’om ’oom to ’oom and having the othas done up.  It’s in that little quiet st’eet behind you’ ga’den wall.  And he’ I am!”

“Is it the old doctor’s house?” asked Lady Ella.