AUNTIE.  Whatever do you mean now?

VICAR.  Didn’t his proposal practically amount to this:  that we should turn my brother Joshua’s name and reputation into a bogus Building Society, of which the funds were to be scraped together from all the naked bodies and the starving bellies of the world, whilst we and our thieving co-directors should collar all the swag?

AUNTIE.  Now, that’s exactly where I think you are so unjust!  Didn’t you yourself refuse, before he spoke a word, to let him put a penny of his own into the concern?  I must say, you were unnecessarily rude to him about that, William!

VICAR.  Yes, and didn’t he jump at the suggestion!

AUNTIE.  He offers to give his patronage, his influence, his time. 
All he asks of your brother is his bare name.

VICAR.  Yes, and all he asks of me is simply my eloquence, my gift of words, my power of lying plausibly!

AUNTIE.  William, he is offering you the opportunity of your life!

VICAR.  Damnation take my life!

AUNTIE.  William, why are you so violent?

VICAR.  Because violence is the only way of coming to the truth between you and me!

AUNTIE [now thoroughly afraid].  What do you mean by the truth,
William?

VICAR.  I mean this:  What is the building of this church to you?  Are you so mightily interested in architecture, in clerical usefulness, in the furtherance of God’s work?

AUNTIE.  I am interested in your work, William.  Do you take me for an atheist?

VICAR.  No:  far worse—­for an idolater!

AUNTIE.  William . . .

VICAR.  What else but idolatry is this precious husband-worship you have set up in your heart—­you and all the women of your kind?  You barter away your own souls in the service of it:  you build up your idols in the fashion of your own respectable desires:  you struggle silently amongst yourselves, one against another, to push your own god foremost in the miserable little pantheon of prigs and hypocrites you have created!

AUNTIE [roused].  It is for your own good we do it!

VICAR.  Our own good!  What have you made of me?  You have plucked me down from whatever native godhead I had by gift of heaven, and hewed and hacked me into the semblance of your own idolatrous imagination!  By God, it shall go on no longer!  If you have made me less than a man, at least I will prove myself to be a priest!

AUNTIE.  Do you call it a priest’s work to . . .

VICAR.  It is my work to deliver you and me from the bondage of lies!  Can’t you see, woman, that God and Mammon are about us, fighting for our souls?

AUNTIE [determinedly].  Listen to me, William, listen to me . . .

VICAR.  I have listened to you too long!

AUNTIE.  You would always take my counsel before . . .

VICAR.  All that is done with!  I am resolved to be a free man from this hour—­free of lies, free of love if needs be, free even of you, free of everything that clogs and hinders me in the work I have to do!  I will do my own deed, not yours!