Page:The Soul of a Bishop.djvu/253

Rh "If I can. When I am free—you know I have still to resign and give up—I shall make that my message."

"And so God comes."

"God comes as men perceive him in his simplicity.... Let men but see God simply, and forthwith God and his kingdom possess the world."

She looked out to sea in silence for awhile.

Then she turned to her father. "And you think that His Kingdom will come—perhaps in quite a little time—perhaps in our lifetimes? And that all these ridiculous or wicked little kings and emperors, and these political parties, and these policies and conspiracies, and this nationalist nonsense and all the patriotism and rowdyism, all the private profit-seeking and every baseness in life, all the things that it is so horrible and disgusting to be young among and powerless among, you think they will fade before him?"

The bishop pulled his faith together.

"They will fade before him—but whether it will take a lifetime or a hundred lifetimes or a thousand lifetimes, my Norah"

He smiled and left his sentence unfinished, and she smiled back at him to show she understood.

And then he confessed further, because he did not want to seem merely sentimentally hopeful.

"When I was in the cathedral, Norah—and just before that service, it seemed to me—it was very real.... It