“Ella!” he said.

“Did you want me?”

“Presently.”

She put a liberal interpretation upon that “presently,” so that after what seemed to him a long interval he had to call again, “Ella!”

“Just a minute,” she answered.

(15)

Lady Ella was still, so to speak, a little in the other room when she came to him.

“Shut that door, please,” he said, and felt the request had just that flavour of portentousness he wished to avoid.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I wanted to talk to you—­about some things.  I’ve done something rather serious to-day.  I’ve made an important decision.”

Her face became anxious.  “What do you mean?” she asked.

“You see,” he said, leaning upon the mantelshelf and looking down at the gas flames, “I’ve never thought that we should all have to live in this crowded house for long.”

“All!” she interrupted in a voice that made him look up sharply.  “You’re not going away, Ted?”

“Oh, no.  But I hoped we should all be going away in a little time.  It isn’t so.”

“I never quite understood why you hoped that.”

“It was plain enough.”

“How?”

“I thought I should have found something to do that would have enabled us to live in better style.  I’d had a plan.”

“What plan?”

“It’s fallen through.”

“But what plan was it?”

“I thought I should be able to set up a sort of broad church chapel.  I had a promise.”

Her voice was rich with indignation.  “And she has betrayed you?”

“No,” he said, “I have betrayed her.”

Lady Ella’s face showed them still at cross purposes.  He looked down again and frowned.  “I can’t do that chapel business,” he said.  “I’ve had to let her down.  I’ve got to let you all down.  There’s no help for it.  It isn’t the way.  I can’t have anything to do with Lady Sunderbund and her chapel.”

“But,” Lady Ella was still perplexed.

“It’s too great a sacrifice.”

“Of us?”

“No, of myself.  I can’t get into her pulpit and do as she wants and keep my conscience.  It’s been a horrible riddle for me.  It means plunging into all this poverty for good.  But I can’t work with her, Ella.  She’s impossible.”

“You mean—­you’re going to break with Lady Sunderbund?”

“I must.”

“Then, Teddy!”—­she was a woman groping for flight amidst intolerable perplexities—­“why did you ever leave the church?”

“Because I have ceased to believe—­”

“But had it nothing to do with Lady Sunderbund?”

He stared at her in astonishment.

“If it means breaking with that woman,” she said.

“You mean,” he said, beginning for the first time to comprehend her, “that you don’t mind the poverty?”

“Poverty!” she cried.  “I cared for nothing but the disgrace.”