He put the elevation down.He took the plan from her hands and seemed to study it.But he was really staring blankly at the whole situation.
"Lady Sunderbund," he said at last, with an effort, "I am afraid all this won't do.""Won't do!"
"No.It isn't in the spirit of my intention.It isn't in a great building of this sort--so--so ornate and imposing, that the simple gospel of God's Universal Kingdom can be preached.""But oughtn't so gate a message to have as g'ate a pulpit?"And then as if she would seize him before he could go on to further repudiations, she sought hastily among the drawings again.
"But look," she said."It has ev'ything! It's not only a p'eaching place; it's a headquarters for ev'ything."With the rapid movements of an excited child she began to thrust the remarkable features and merits of the great project upon him.The preaching dome was only the heart of it.There were to be a library, "'efecto'ies," consultation rooms, classrooms, a publication department, a big underground printing establishment.
"Nowadays," she said, "ev'y gate movement must p'int." There was to be music, she said, "a gate invisible o'gan," hidden amidst the architectural details, and pouring out its sounds into the dome, and then she glanced in passing at possible "p'ocessions"round the preaching dome.This preaching dome was not a mere shut-in drum for spiritual reverberations, around it ran great open corridors, and in these corridors there were to be "chapels.""But what for?" he asked, stemming the torrent."What need is there for chapels? There are to be no altars, no masses, no sacraments?""No," she said, "but they are to be chapels for special int'ests; a chapel for science, a chapel for healing, a chapel for gov'ment.Places for peoples to sit and think about those things--with paintings and symbols.""I see your intention," he admitted."I see your intention.""The' is to be a gate da'k blue 'ound chapel for sta's and atoms and the myst'ry of matta." Her voice grew solemn."All still and deep and high.Like a k'ystal in a da'k place.You will go down steps to it.Th'ough a da'k 'ounded a'ch ma'ked with mathematical symbols and balances and scientific app'atus....And the ve'y next to it, the ve'y next, is to be a little b'ight chapel for bi'ds and flowas!""Yes," he said, "it is all very fine and expressive.It is, Isee, a symbolical building, a great artistic possibility.But is it the place for me? What I have to say is something very simple, that God is the king of the whole world, king of the ha'penny newspaper and the omnibus and the vulgar everyday things, and that they have to worship him and serve him as their leader in every moment of their lives.This isn't that.This is the old religions over again.This is taking God apart.This is putting him into a fresh casket instead of the old one.And....I don't like it.""Don't like it," she cried, and stood apart from him with her chin in the air, a tall astonishment and dismay.
"I can't do the work I want to do with this.""But--Isn't it you' idea?"
"No.It is not in the least my idea.I want to tell the whole world of the one God that can alone unite it and save it--and you make this extravagant toy."He felt as if he had struck her directly he uttered that last word.
"Toy!" she echoed, taking it in, "you call it a Toy!"A note in her voice reminded him that there were two people who might feel strongly in this affair.
"My dear Lady Sunderbund," he said with a sudden change of manner, "I must needs follow the light of my own mind.I have had a vision of God, I have seen him as a great leader towering over the little lives of men, demanding the little lives of men, prepared to take them and guide them to the salvation of mankind and the conquest of pain and death.I have seen him as the God of the human affair, a God of politics, a God of such muddy and bloody wars as this war, a God of economics, a God of railway junctions and clinics and factories and evening schools, a God in fact of men.This God--this God here, that you want to worship, is a God of artists and poets--of elegant poets, a God of bric-a-brac, a God of choice allusions.Oh, it has its grandeur!
I don't want you to think that what you are doing may not be altogether fine and right for you to do.But it is not what Ihave to do....I cannot--indeed I cannot--go on with this project--upon these lines."He paused, flushed and breathless.Lady Sunderbund had heard him to the end.Her bright face was brightly flushed, and there were tears in her eyes.It was like her that they should seem tears of the largest, most expensive sort, tears of the first water.
"But," she cried, and her red delicate mouth went awry with dismay and disappointment, and her expression was the half incredulous expression of a child suddenly and cruelly disappointed: "You won't go on with all this?""No," he said."My dear Lady Sunderbund--""Oh! don't Lady Sunderbund me!" she cried with a novel rudeness."Don't you see I've done it all for you?"He winced and felt boorish.He had never liked and disapproved of Lady Sunderbund so much as he did at that moment.And he had no words for her.
"How can I stop it all at once like this?"And still he had no answer.
She pursued her advantage."What am I to do?" she cried.
She turned upon him passionately."Look what you've done!" She marked her points with finger upheld, and gave odd suggestions in her face of an angry coster girl."Eva' since I met you, I've wo'shipped you.I've been 'eady to follow you anywhe'--to do anything.Eva' since that night when you sat so calm and dignified, and they baited you and wo'id you.When they we' all vain and cleva, and you--you thought only of God and 'iligion and didn't mind fo' you'self....Up to then--I'd been living--oh! the emptiest life..."
The tears ran."Pe'haps I shall live it again...." She dashed her grief away with a hand beringed with stones as big as beetles.
