She was silent momentarily. Then she returned to the attack, almost doggedly.
"Well, then, let me be the first. This church will cost...."
"Six hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars," he supplied coldly. He regretted that circumstances had forced him into what was beyond dispute a refined form of beggary. But he had realised from the start that success of this sort was quite essential to eminence in the clergy, and he had resolutely fought down his distaste. But it angered him to be so brutally reminded of his status, particularly by a creature whom he sedulously deified. She seemed deliberately intent upon leaving the pedestal he had constructed for her.
Again she was silent, surveying him with a smile that he thought was unpleasantly cynical. It seemed also that there was a noticeable admixture of contempt for him. His anger gave way to pain. He racked his brain for an explanation of her attitude.
"That's a great deal of money," she said unpleasantly. "And with it you're going to build a marble palace on our finest street. Do you know what I think, Arnold?" she added, not unkindly. "I think you've gotten art and religion mixed."
He shrugged his shoulders at that, not knowing how to reply, and she went on, her tone changing imperceptibly, as she spoke, from a scarcely concealed bitterness, to one that was almost argumentative.
"In theory, of course, the Church is for the lame and the halt and blind, the poor and the sick and the friendless, isn't it?"
He nodded, feeling curiously uncomfortable. He did not like to have his mission in life subjected to such matter-of-fact analysis, and besides, it filled him with a vague interrogation.
"Well, what will this wonderful church do for the poor and the...."
"We are to have a gymnasium and a library and...."