s in this state that he came to his talk with
Eleanor.
He did not give her much time to develop her objections. He met her
half way and stated them for her, and overwhelmed her with sympathy
and understanding. She had been "too literal." "Too literal" was his
keynote. He was a little astonished at the liberality of his own views.
He had been getting along now for some years without looking into his
own opinions too closely and he was by no means prepared to discover
how far he had come to meet his daughter's scepticisms. But he did meet
them. He met them so thoroughly that he almost conveyed that hers was a
needlessly conservative and oldfashioned attitude.
Occasionally he felt he was being a little evasive, but she did not
seem to notice it. As she took his drift, her relief and happiness were
manifest. And he had never noticed before how clear and pretty her eyes
were; they were the most honest eyes he had ever seen. She looked at him
very steadily as he explained, and lit up at his points. She brightened
wonderfully as she realized that after all they were not apart, they had
not differed; simply they had misunderstood....
And before he knew where he was, and in a mere parenthetical declaration
of liberality, he surprised himself by conceding her demand for Newnham
even before she had repeated it. It helped his case wonderfully.
"Call in every exterior witness you can. The church will welcome
them.... No, I want you to go, my dear...."
But his mind was stirred again to its depths by this discussion. And
in particular he was surprised and a little puzzled by this Newnham
concession and the necessity of making his new attitude clear to Lady
Ella....
It was with a sense of fatality that he found himself awake again that
night, like some one lying drowned and still and yet perfectly conscious
at the bottom of deep cold water.
He repeated, "He giveth his Beloved sleep," but all the conviction had
gone out of the words.
(4)
Neither the bishop's insomnia nor his incertitudes about himself and his
faith developed in a simple and orderly manner. There were periods of
sustained suffering and periods of recovery; it was not for a year or
so that he regarded these troubles as more than acute incidental
interruptions of his general tranquillity or realized that he was
passing into a new phase of life and into a new quality of thought.
He told every one of the insomnia and no one of his doubts; these he
betr
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