lace. There was a vibration in her voice
and a sudden gleam of enthusiasm in her face. "Why shouldn't people talk
se'iously sometimes?"

"Well, take my own case," said Hoppart. "In the last few weeks, I've
been reading not only in the Bible but in the Fathers. I've read most of
Athanasius, most of Eusebius, and--I'll confess it--Gibbon. I find all
my old wonder come back. Why are we pinned to--to the amount of creed we
are pinned to? Why for instance must you insist on the Trinity?"

"Yes," said the Eton boy explosively, and flushed darkly to find he had
spoken.

"Here is a time when men ask for God," said Hoppart. "And you give them
three!" cried Bent rather cheaply. "I confess I find the way encumbered
by these Alexandrian elaborations," Hoppart completed.

"Need it be?" whispered Lady Sunderbund very softly.

"Well," said the bishop, and leant back in his armchair and knitted his
brow at the fire. "I do not think," he said, "that men coming to God
think very much of the nature of God. Nevertheless," he spoke slowly
and patted the arm of his chair, "nevertheless the church insists that
certain vitally important truths have to be conveyed, certain mortal
errors are best guarded against, by these symbols."

"You admit they are symbols."

"So the church has always called them."

Hoppart showed by a little movement and grimace that he thought the
bishop quibbled.

"In every sense of the word," the bishop hastened to explain, "the
creeds are symbolical. It is clear they seek to express ineffable things
by at least an extended use of familiar words. I suppose we are all
agreed nowadays that when we speak of the Father and of the Son we mean
something only in a very remote and exalted way parallel with--with
biological fatherhood and sonship."

Lady Sunderbund nodded eagerly. "Yes," she said, "oh, yes," and held up
an expectant face for more.

"Our utmost words, our most elaborately phrased creeds, can at the best
be no better than the shadow of something unseen thrown upon the screen
of experience."

He raised his rather weary eyes to Hoppart as if he would know what else
needed explanation. He was gratified by Lady Sunderbund's approval, but
he affected not to see or hear it. But it was Bent who spoke.

He spoke in the most casual way. He made the thing seem the most
incidental of observations.

"What puzzles me," he said, "is why the early Christians identified the
Spermaticos Logos of the Stoics with th