"Meynell too," said the Professor. "That of course is their game. Meynell has always gone for the inclusion of the Dissenters."
"Well, it was Arnold's game!" said the Canon, his look kindling. "Don't let's forget that. Meynell's dream is not unlike his—to include everybody that would be included."
"Except the Unitarians," said the Professor with emphasis—"the deniers of the Incarnation. Arnold drew the line there. So must we."
He spoke with a crisp and smiling decision—as of one in authority. All kinds of assumptions lay behind his manner. Dornal looked at him with a rather troubled and hostile eye. This whole matter of the coming trial was to him deeply painful. He would have given anything to avoid it; but he did not see how it could be avoided. The extraordinary spread of the Movement indeed had made it impossible.
At this moment one of the vergers of the Cathedral entered the room to say that Mr. Meynell was waiting below. The Dean directed that he should be shown up, and the whole commission dropped their conversational air and sat expectant.
Meynell came in, rather hastily, brushing his hair back from his forehead. He shook hands with the Dean and the Archdeacon, and bowed to the other members of the commission. As he sat down, the Archdeacon, who was very sensitive to such things, and was himself a model of spick-and-span-ness, noticed that the Rector's coat was frayed, and one of the buttons loose. Anne indeed was not a very competent valet of her master; and nothing but a certain esthetic element in Meynell preserved him from a degree of personal untidiness which might perhaps have been excused in a man alternating, hour by hour, between his study-table and the humblest practical tasks among his people.
[Illustration: "He shook hands with the Dean">[
The other members of the commission observed him attentively. Perhaps all in their different ways and degrees were conscious of change in him: the change wrought insensibly in a man by some high pressure of emotion and responsibility—the change that makes a man a leader of his fellows, consecrates and sets him apart. Canon Dornal watched him with a secret sympathy and pity. The Archdeacon said to himself with repugnance that Meynell now had the look of a fanatic.
The Dean took a volume from the pile beside him, and opened it at a marked page.
"Before concluding our report to the Bishop, Mr. Meynell, we wished to have your explanation of an important passage in one of your recent sermons; and you have been kind enough to meet us with a view to giving us that explanation. Will you be so good as to look at the passage?"