"I was not thinking of Miss Puttenham, I assure you. She has taken very
little part in this particular movement. I never know whether she is
really with us. She stands outside the old things, but I can never make
myself happy by the hope that I have been able to win her to the new!"
Mary looked puzzled--interrogative. But she checked her question, and
drew him back instead to his narrative--to the small incidents and signs
which had gradually revealed to him, among even his brother clergy, years
before that date, the working of ideas and thoughts like his own. And
now--
He broke off abruptly.
"You have heard of our meeting last week?"
"Of course!"
"There were men there from all parts of the diocese--and some from other
counties. It made me think of what a French Catholic Modernist said to me
two years ago--'Pius X may write encyclicals as he pleases--I could show
him whole dioceses in France that are practically Modernist, where the
Seminaries are Modernist, and two thirds of the clergy. The Bishop knows
it quite well, and is helpless. Over the border perhaps you get an
Ultramontane diocese, and an Ultramontane bishop. But the process goes
on. Life and time are for _us_!'" He paused and laughed. "Ah, of course I
don't pretend things are so here--yet. Our reforms in England--in Church
and State--broaden slowly down.
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