“That doesn’t matta.  I’m making heaps and heaps of money.  Half my p’ope’ty is in shipping and a lot of the ’eat in munitions.  I’m ’icher than eva.  Isn’t the’ a sort of g’andeur?” she pressed.

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, I see, 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.”