ailway 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 I have 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.

"I said to myself, this man knows something I don't know. He's got the
seeds of ete'nal life su'ely. I made up my mind then and the' I'd follow
you and back you and do all I could fo' you. I've lived fo' you. Eve'
since. Lived fo' you. And now when all my little plans are 'ipe, you--!
Oh!"

She made a quaint little gesture with pink fists upraised, and then
stood with her hand held up, staring at the plans and dr