“Was it Lady Sunderbund?” asked Clementina.
Scrope was pulled up abruptly. “Yes,” he said. “It seemed at first a quite hopeful project.”
“We'd have hated that,” said Clementina, with a glance as if for assent, at her mother. “We should all have hated that.”
“Anyhow it has fallen through.”
“We don't mind that,” said Clementina, and Daphne echoed her words.
“I don't see that there is any necessity to import this note of—hostility to Lady Sunderbund into this matter.” He addressed himself rather more definitely to Lady Ella. “She's a woman of a very extraordinary character, highly emotional, energetic, generous to an extraordinary extent....”
Daphne made a little noise like a comment.
A faint acerbity in her father's voice responded.
“Anyhow you make a mistake if you think that the personality of Lady Sunderbund has very much to do with this thing now. Her quality may have brought out certain aspects of the situation rather more sharply than they might have been brought out under other circumstances, but if this chapel enterprise had been suggested by quite a different sort of person, by a man, or by a committee, in the end I think I should have come to the same conclusion. Leave Lady Sunderbund out. Any chapel was impossible. It is just this specialization that has been the trouble with religion. It is just this tendency to make it the business of a special sort of man, in a special sort of building, on a special day—Every man, every building, every day belongs equally to God. That is my conviction. I think that the only possible existing sort of religions meeting is something after the fashion of the Quaker meeting. In that there is no professional religious man at all; not a trace of the sacrifices to the ancient gods.... And no room for a professional religions man....” He felt his argument did a little escape him. He snatched, “That is what I want to make clear to you. God is not a speciality; he is a universal interest.”
He stopped. Both Daphne and Clementina seemed disposed to say something and did not say anything.