"It is the ignorant people who always do pronounce judgment," said May. "So that will be all right. You spoke of Mr. Boreham preaching. Well, I've just been preaching. It's a horrid habit."
Bingham gave one of his surprising and most cultured explosions of laughter. May turned and looked at him with her eyebrows very much raised.
"I am laughing at myself," he explained. "I thought to buy things too cheaply."
May looked away, pondering on the meaning of his words. At last the meaning occurred to her.
"You mean you wanted to flatter me, and—and I began to talk about something else. Was that what made you laugh?" she asked.
"That's it," said Bingham. "I wanted to flatter you because it is a pleasure to flatter you, and I forgot what a privilege it was."
"Cheap, cheap, always cheap!" said Bingham. "Cheapness is the curse of our age. The old Radical belief in the right to buy cheaply, that poison has soaked into the very bone of politics. It has contaminated our religion. The pulpit has decided in favour of cheap salvation."
May looked round again at Bingham's moonlit profile.
"No more hell!" he said, "no more narrow way, no more strait gate to heaven! On the contrary, we bawl ourselves blue asserting that the way is broad, and that every blessed man Jack of us will find it. Yes," he went on more slowly, "we have no use now for a God who can deny to any one a cheap suburban residence in the New Jerusalem. And so," he added, "I flatter you, stupidly, and—and you forgive me."