“Ye—es,” said the bishop and reflected.
He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage people; he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of matters, and the memory of these utterances hampered him.
“You could read here,” he tried.
“If I were a son, you wouldn't say that.”
His reply was vague. “But in this home,” he said, “we have a certain atmosphere.”
He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and response from the hardier male.
Her hesitation marked the full gravity of her reply. “It's just that,” she said. “One feels—” She considered it further. “As if we were living in a kind of magic world—not really real. Out there—” she glanced over her shoulder at the drawn blind that hid the night. “One meets with different sorts of minds and different—atmospheres. All this is very beautiful. I've had the most wonderful home. But there's a sort of feeling as though it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikes and doubts and questionings—”
She stopped short at questionings, for the thing was said.
The bishop took her meaning gallantly and honestly.
“The church of Christ, little Norah, is built upon a rock.”