could not resist the impulse to get him at least a seemly

reading-lamp.
He came back from Hunstanton full of ideas for work in London.

He was, he thought, going to "write something" about his views.
He was very grateful and much surprised at what she had done to

that forbidding house, and full of hints and intimations that it
would not be long before they moved to something roomier. She was

disposed to seek some sort of salaried employment for Clementina
and Miriam at least, but he would not hear of that. "They must go

on and get educated," he said, "if I have to give up smoking to
do it. Perhaps I may manage even without that." Eleanor, it

seemed, had a good prospect of a scholarship at the London School
of Economics that would practically keep her. There would be no

Cambridge for Clementina, but London University might still be
possible with a little pinching, and the move to London had

really improved the prospects of a good musical training for
Miriam. Phoebe and Daphne, Lady Ella believed, might get in on

special terms at the Notting Hill High School.
Scrope found it difficult to guess at what was going on in the

heads of his younger daughters. None displayed such sympathy as
Eleanor had confessed. He had a feeling that his wife had

schooled them to say nothing about the change in their fortunes
to him. But they quarrelled a good deal, he could hear, about the

use of the one bathroom--there was never enough hot water after
the second bath. And Miriam did not seem to enjoy playing the new

upright piano in the drawing-room as much as she had done the
Princhester grand it replaced. Though she was always willing to

play that thing he liked; he knew now that it was the Adagio of
Of. 111; whenever he asked for it.

London servants, Lady Ella found, were now much more difficult
to get than they had been in the Holy Innocents' days in St.

John's Wood. And more difficult to manage when they were got. The
households of the more prosperousclergy are much sought after by

domestics of a serious and excellent type; an unfrocked
clergyman's household is by no means so attractive. The first

comers were young women of unfortunate dispositions; the first
cook was reluctant and insolent, she went before her month was

up; the second careless; she made burnt potatoes and cindered
chops, underboiled and overboiled eggs; a "dropped" look about

everything, harsh coffee and bitter tea seemed to be a natural
aspect of the state of being no longer a bishop. He would often

after a struggle with his nerves in the bedroom come humming
cheerfully to breakfast, to find that Phoebe, who was a delicate

eater, had pushed her plate away scarcely touched, while Lady
Ella sat at the end of the table in a state of dangerous calm,

framing comments for delivering downstairs that would be sure to
sting and yet leave no opening for repartee, and trying at the

same time to believe that a third cook, if the chances were
risked again, would certainly be "all right."

The drawing-room was papered with a morose wallpaper that the
landlord, in view of the fact that Scrope in his optimism would

only take the house on a yearlyagreement, had refused to
replace; it was a design of very dark green leaves and grey

gothic arches; and the apartment was lit by a chandelier, which
spilt a pool of light in the centre of the room and splashed

useless weak patches elsewhere. Lady Ella had to interfere to
prevent the monopolization of this centre by Phoebe and Daphne

for their home work. This light trouble was difficult to arrange;
the plain truth was that there was not enough illumination to go

round. In the Princhester drawing-room there had been a number of
obliging little electric pushes. The size of the dining-room, now

that the study was cut off from it, forbadehospitality. As it
was, with only the family at home, the housemaid made it a

grievance that she could scarcely squeeze by on the sideboard
side to wait.

The house vibrated to the trains in the adjacent underground
railway. There was a lady next door but one who was very pluckily

training a contralto voice that most people would have gladly
thrown away. At the end of Restharrow Street was a garage, and a

yard where chauffeurs were accustomed to "tune up" their engines.
All these facts were persistently audible to any one sitting down

in the little back study to think out this project of "writing
something," about a change in the government of the whole world.

Petty inconveniences no doubt all these inconveniences were, but
they distressed a rather oversensitive mind which was also

acutely aware that even upon this scale living would cost
certainly two hundred and fifty pounds if not more in excess of

the little private income available.
(5)

These domestic details, irrelevant as they may seem in a
spiritual history, need to be given because they added an

intimate keenness to Scrope's readiness for this private chapel
enterprise that he was discussing with Lady Sunderbund. Along

that line and along that line alone, he saw the way of escape
from the great sea of London dinginess that threatened to

submerge his family. And it was also, he felt, the line of his
duty; it was his "call."

At least that was how he felt at first. And then matters began
to grow complicated again.

Things had gone far between himself and Lady Sunderbund since
that letter he had read upon the beach at Old Hunstanton. The

blinds of the house with the very very blue door in Princhester
had been drawn from the day when the first vanload of the

renegade bishop's private possessions had departed from the
palace. The lady had returned to the brightly decorated flat

overlooking Hyde Park. He had seen her repeatedly since then,
and always with a fairly clear understanding that she was to

provide the chapel and pulpit in which he was to proclaim to
London the gospel of the Simplicity and Universality of God. He

was to be the prophet of a reconsidered faith, calling the whole
world from creeds and sects, from egotisms and vain loyalties,

from prejudices of race and custom, to the worship and service of
the Divine King of all mankind. That in fact had been the ruling

resolve in his mind, the resolve determining his relations not
only with Lady Sunderbund but with Lady Ella and his family, his

friends, enemies and associates. He had set out upon this course
unchecked by any doubt, and overriding the manifest disapproval

of his wife and his younger daughters. Lady Sunderbund's
enthusiasm had been enormous and sustaining....

Almost imperceptibly that resolve had weakened. Imperceptibly
at first. Then the decline had been perceived as one sometimes

perceives a thing in the background out of the corner of one's
eye.

In all his early anticipations of the chapelenterprise, he had
imagined himself in the likeness of a small but eloquent figure

standing in a large exposed place and calling this lost misled
world back to God. Lady Sunderbund, he assumed, was to provide

the large exposed place (which was dimly paved with pews) and
guarantee that little matter which was to relieve him of sordid

anxieties for his family, the stipend. He had agreed in an
inattentive way that this was to be eight hundred a year, with a

certain proportion of the subscriptions. "At fl'st, I shall be
the chief subsc'iber," she said. "Before the 'ush comes." He had

been so content to take all this for granted and think no more
about it--more particularly to think no more about it--that

for a time he entirely disregarded the intense decorative
activities into which Lady Sunderbund incontinently plunged. Had

he been inclined to remark them he certainly might have done so,
even though a considerableproportion was being thoughtfully

veiled for a time from his eyes.
For example, there was the young architect with the wonderful

tie whom he met once or twice at lunch in the Hyde Park flat.