She drew her stitches nervously.
"That has utterly passed out of your mind?"
"Must it not necessarily have done so?"
He stepped back, held his head aside, and examined her thoughtfully.
"H'm. I have an impression that you went beyond thinking of it as a possibility. Did you not make a distinct promise to some one or another—perhaps to the congregation?"
"Yes, a distinct promise."
He became silent; and Miriam, looking up for the first time, asked:
"Is it your opinion that the promise is still binding on me?"
"Why, I am inclined to think so. Your difficulty is, of course, that you don't see your way to spending a large sum of money to advance something with which you have no sympathy."
"It isn't only that I have no sympathy with it," broke from Miriam. "The thought of those people and their creeds is hateful to me. Their so-called religion is a vice. They are as far from being Christians as I am from being a Mahometan. To call them Puritans is the exaggeration of compliment."