"Do you think," she asked, "do you think it really has a chance?"
"Shirley, it's so good I can hardly believe it came out of my head.
Maybe it didn't, but just passed through coming from—somewhere."
He was thinking it was an inspiration. . . . Well, since then many men who ought to know have thought and said the same thing about that church.
For two months he toiled every spare moment of the day and in the still watches of the night, elaborating that first rough sketch, working out details, which came to him as of their own accord, making beautiful plans and elevations and long sheets of specifications. He gave to the work enthusiasm, patience and stern criticism. In return it gave him a new faith in himself. And hope. He knew he would not fail in this.
It was not really hard work. For, as the weeks sped by, there grew up in his heart a love for the thing to which he was giving birth, deep, warm and abiding, a love that counted no hour of labor too heavy, no task too exacting. He did not care to think of the day when the work must pass out of his hands.
A little of his ardor entered into Shirley. She, too, hoped. She thought of the fee such a commission would bring, of the release from care and the good times that fee would buy. Sometimes she had a glimpse of the new love growing up in David's heart, but, though she did not wholly like that, she gave it no serious thought.
"Would you mind coming back to me?" she asked one evening, thus bringing him out of a smiling brown study.
"I was just thinking what it would feel like to see the church real."
"Don't you ever think of the money it will bring?"
"That, too, sometimes. But I never knew before how much the work—just being in it, you know—means to me."