TREBELL.  I think so.  You’ve fought for years for your tests and your atmosphere with plain business men not able to understand such lunacy.  Quite right ... atmosphere’s all that matters.  If one and one don’t make two by God’s grace....

CANTELUPE.  Poetry again!

TREBELL.  I beg your pardon.  Well ... you’ve no further proof.  If you can’t plant your thumb on the earth and your little finger on the pole star you know nothing of distances.  We must do away with text-book teachers.

      CANTELUPE is opening out a little in spite of himself.

CANTELUPE.  I’m waiting for our opinions to differ.

TREBELL. [Businesslike again.] I’ll send you a draft of the statutes I propose within a week.  Meanwhile shall I put the offer this way.  If I accept your tests will you accept mine?

CANTELUPE.  What are yours?

TREBELL.  I believe if one provides for efficiency one provides for the best part of truth ... honesty of statement.  I shall hope for a little more elasticity in your dogmas than Becket or Cranmer or Laud would have allowed.  When you’ve a chance to re-formulate the reasons of your faith for the benefit of men teaching mathematics and science and history and political economy, you won’t neglect to answer or allow for criticisms and doubts.  I don’t see why ... in spite of all the evidence to the contrary ... such a thing as progress in a definite religious faith is impossible.

CANTELUPE.  Progress is a soiled word. [And now he weighs his words.] I shall be very glad to accept on the Church’s behalf control of the teaching of teachers in these colleges.

TREBELL.  Good.  I want the best men.

CANTELUPE.  You are surprisingly inexperienced if you think that creeds can ever become mere forms except to those who have none.

TREBELL.  But teaching—­true teaching—­is learning, and the wish to know is going to prevail against any creed ... so I think.  I wish you cared as little for the form in which a truth is told as I do.  On the whole, you see, I think I shall manage to plant your theology in such soil this spring that the garden will be fruitful.  On the whole I’m a believer in Churches of all sorts and their usefulness to the State.  Your present use is out-worn.  Have I found you in this the beginnings of a new one?

CANTELUPE.  The Church says:  Thank you, it is a very old one.

TREBELL. [Winding up the interview.] To be sure, for practical politics our talk can be whittled down to your accepting the secular solution for Primary Schools, if you’re given these colleges under such statutes as you and I shall agree upon.

CANTELUPE.  And the country will accept.

TREBELL.  The country will accept any measure if there’s enough money in it to bribe all parties fairly.

CANTELUPE.  You expect very little of the constancy of my Church to her Faith, Mr. Trebell.