She stopped short. She was breathless with the excitement of her confession.
Her father too remained silent for a little while. He was reminded of his weakness; he was, he perceived, still a little hysterical. He felt that he might weep at her youthful enthusiasm if he did not restrain himself.
“I'm glad,” he said, and patted her shoulder. “I'm glad, Norah.”
She looked away from him out across the lank brown sands and water pools to the sea. “It was what we have all been feeling our way towards, the absolute simplification of religion, the absolute simplification of politics and social duty; just God, just God the King.”
“But should I have said that--in the cathedral?”
She felt no scruples. “You had to,” she said.
“But now think what it means,” he said. “I must leave the church.”
“As a man strips off his coat for a fight.”
She shook her head, and smiled confidently to sea and sky.
“I'm glad if you're with me,” he said. “Sometimes--I think--I'm not a very self-reliant man.”
“You'll have all the world with you,” she was convinced, “in a little time.”
“Perhaps rather a longer time than you think, Norah. In the meantime--”
“In the meantime there are a great many things to consider. Young people, they say, never think of the transport that is needed to win a battle. I have it in my mind that I should leave the church. But I can't just walk out into the marketplace and begin preaching there. I see the family furniture being carried out of the palace and put into vans. It has to go somewhere....”
“Possibly. In fact certainly. I have a plan. Or at least an opportunity.... But that isn't what I have most in mind. These things are not done without emotion and a considerable strain upon one's personal relationships. I do not think this--I do not think your mother sees things as we do.”
“She will,” said young enthusiasm, “when she understands.”
“I wish she did. But I have been unlucky in the circumstances of my explanations to her. And of course you understand all this means risks--poverty perhaps--going without things--travel, opportunity, nice possessions--for all of us. A loss of position too. All this sort of thing,” he stuck out a gaitered calf and smiled, “will have to go. People, some of them, may be disasagreeable to us....”