"What nonsense," she snapped. "You're going to have them all miles from the nearest poor. That's an absurd answer."
"Judith, what is the matter?" he pleaded. "You were never like this before."
She ignored the question.
"Why aren't you honest?" she countered. "Why don't you admit that it's all for the Wynrods, and the Wolcotts and the Warings and the ... why don't you admit that it's just a monument to pride, pure and simple?"
He was aghast. Also he was offended, to the depths of his soul. She had trampled deliberately on what was dear to him, and subtly, but no less certainly, she had made an implication which roused in him all the resentment of which he was capable. But the very thought of resentment brought with it the recollection of all his professional training. Arnold Imrie was perilously close to a very human display of temper, but the Reverend Arnold saved him.
"For some reason," he said slowly, in a manner that to her savoured of the pulpit, "you seem unwilling to discuss this matter reasonably. I don't think you are fair to it—or to me—which is unlike you. Some other time, when you are in a different mood, we will perhaps talk about it again." He rolled up his plans and rose. "I will bid you good evening, Judith."
"Very properly rebuked," laughed Judith insolently. "I admire your self control. But you're so proper, Arnold. If you were only a little more ... oh, well—but I haven't been condemning you—entirely. It's what you stand for. It isn't that you're a snob—but you're being—doing—oh, I'd like to put things as clearly as you can. I'd make you understand me, if I only knew how to. But I...."
"I think I understand very well," he interrupted sharply. A thought, a half-formulated suspicion, had flitted across his mind.
"No, you don't. You think I'm poking fun at you—just to be nasty. It isn't that. I'm serious—really. Only somehow—you don't impress me as much as you used to. You—your ideas—what you stand for—oh, they don't seem to very much matter. Your kind of religion seems to me—I've thought it more and more—it seems to me a sort of hobby. It's just for Sundays."
He stared at her aghast, seeming to waver between grief and righteous anger. But he said nothing. She went on coolly.