'No need. We're going. What d'you suppose I should do here? There's no Lord's Day and no Lord's house, for there's no Lord. For goodness' sake, turn the chapel into a cowhouse!'
They blinked. Their minds did not take in his meaning, which was like the upper wind that blows coldly from mountain to mountain and does not touch the plain. They busied themselves with what they could grasp.
'If you take that woman with you, you'll be accurst,' said James. 'I suppose,' he went on, and his tone was, as he afterwards said to his wife with complacency, 'very nasty'—'I suppose you dunno what they're all saying, and what I've come to believe, in this shocking meeting, to be God's truth?'
'I don't know or care.'
'They're saying you've made a tidy bit.'
'What d'you mean?'
James hesitated. Filthy thoughts were all very well, but it was awkward to get them into righteous words.
'Well, dear me! they're saying as there was an arrangement betwixt you and 'im—on the gel's account—(the old beeman tried to hush him)—and as cheques signed "John Reddin" went to your bank. Dear me!'
Slowly the meaning of this dawned on Edward. He sat down and put his hands up before his face. He was broken, not so much by the insult to himself as by the fixed idea that he had exposed Hazel to all this. He traced all her troubles and mistakes back to himself, blaming his own love for them. While he had been fighting for her happiness, he had given her a mortal wound, and none had warned him. That was why he was sure there was no God.
They sat round and looked at their work with some compunction. The old beeman cleared his throat several times.