Eleanor?" he asked abruptly. "Do you think I had a sort of fit in the
cathedral?"

He winced as he asked the question.

"Daddy," she said, after a little pause; "the things you said and did
that afternoon were the noblest you ever did in your life. I wish I had
been there. It must have been splendid to be there. I've not told you
before--I've been dying to.... I'd promised not to say a word--not to
remind you. I promised the doctor. But now you ask me, now you are well
again, I can tell you. Kitty Kingdom has told me all about it, how it
felt. It was like light and order coming into a hopeless dark muddle.
What you said was like what we have all been trying to think--I mean all
of us young people. Suddenly it was all clear."

She stopped short. She was breathless with the excitement of her
confession.

Her father too remained silent for a little while. He was reminded of
his weakness; he was, he perceived, still a little hysterical. He felt
that he might weep at her youthful enthusiasm if he did not restrain
himself.

"I'm glad," he said, and patted her shoulder. "I'm glad, Norah."

She looked away from him out across the lank brown sands and water pools
to the sea. "It was what we have all been feeling our way towards, the
absolute simplification of religion, the absolute simplification of
politics and social duty; just God, just God the King."

"But should I have said that--in the cathedral?"

She felt no scruples. "You had to," she said.

"But now think what it means," he said. "I must leave the church."

"As a man strips off his coat for a fight."

"That doesn't dismay you?"

She shook her head, and smiled confidently to sea and sky.

"I'm glad if you're with me," he said. "Sometimes--I think--I'm not a
very self-reliant man."

"You'll have all the world with you," she was convinced, "in a little
time."

"Perhaps rather a longer time than you think, Norah. In the meantime--"

She turned to him once more.

"In the meantime there are a great many things to consider. Young
people, they say, never think of the transport that is needed to win a
battle. I have it in my mind that I should leave the church. But I can't
just walk out into the marketplace and begin preaching there. I see the
family furniture being carried out of the palace and put into vans. It
has to go somewhere...."

"I suppose you will go to London."

"Possibly. In fact certainly. I have a plan. Or at least an
opportunity.... But