―I am not at all sure of it, Stephen said. He is more like a son of God than a son of Mary.
―And is that why you will not communicate, Cranly asked, because you are not sure of that too, because you feel that the host, too, may be the body and blood of the son of God and not a wafer of bread? And because you fear that it may be?
―Yes, Stephen said quietly, I feel that and I also fear it.
―I see, Cranly said.
Stephen, struck by his tone of closure, reopened the discussion at once by saying:
―I fear many things: dogs, horses, firearms, the sea, thunderstorms, machinery, the country roads at night.
―But why do you fear a bit of bread?
―I imagine, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent reality behind those things I say I fear.
―Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the Roman catholics would strike you dead and damn you if you made a sacrilegious communion?
―The God of the Roman catholics could do that now, Stephen said. I fear more than that the chemical action which would be set up in my soul by a false homage to a symbol behind which are massed twenty centuries of authority and veneration.
―Would you, Cranly asked, in extreme danger, commit that particular sacrilege? For instance, if you lived in the penal days?
―I cannot answer for the past, Stephen replied. Possibly not.