"You can substantiate what you have been saying?"
"I will send you papers to-morrow morning. But of course"—added Meynell, after a pause—"a great many of us will be out of our berths, in a few months, temporarily at least. It will rest with Parliament whether we remain so!"
"The Non-Jurors of the twentieth century!" murmured Norham, with a half-sceptical intonation.
"Ah, but this is the twentieth century!"—said Meynell smiling. "And in our belief the dénouement will be different."
"What will you do—you clergy—when you are deprived?"
"In the first place, it will take a long time to deprive us—and so long as there are any of us left in our livings, each will come to the help of the other."
"But you yourself?"
"I have already made arrangements for a big barn in the village"—said Meynell, smiling—"a great tithe-barn of the fifteenth century, a magnificent old place, with a forest of wooden arches, and a vault like a church. The village will worship there for a while. We shall make it beautiful!"
Norham was silent for a moment. He was stupefied by the energy, the passion of religious hope in the face beside him. Then the critical temper in him conquered his emotion, and he said, not without sarcasm:
"This is all very surprising—very interesting—but what are the ideas behind you? A thing like this cannot live without ideas—and I confess I have always thought the ideas of Liberal Christianity a rather beggarly set-out—excuse the phrase!"