“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.