down, shapeless in a black corner of his mind--from which their
eyes shone out, so to speak--whenever his doubt whether he

ought to set up as a prophet at all was under consideration.
(6)

Then very suddenly on this October afternoon the situation had
come to a crisis.

He had gone to Lady Sunderbund's flat to see the plans and
drawings for the new church in which he was to give his message

to the world. They had brought home to him the complete
realization of Lady Sunderbund's possibility" target="_blank" title="n.不可能办到的事">impossibility. He had attempted

upon the spur of the moment an explanation of just how much they
differed, and he had precipitated a storm of extravagantly

perplexing emotions....
She kept him waiting for perhaps ten minutes before she brought

the plans to him. He waited in the little room with the Wyndham
Lewis picture that opened upon the balcony painted with crazy

squares of livid pink. On a golden table by the window a number
of recently bought books were lying, and he went and stood over

these, taking them up one after another. The first was "The
Countess of Huntingdon and Her Circle," that bearder of

lightminded archbishops, that formidable harbourer of Wesleyan
chaplains. For some minutes he studied the grim portrait of this

inspired lady standing with one foot ostentatiously on her
coronet and then turned to the next volume. This was a life of

Saint Teresa, that energetic organizer of Spanish nunneries. The
third dealt with Madame Guyon. It was difficult not to feel that

Lady Sunderbund was reading for a part.
She entered.

She was wearing a long simple dress of spangled white with a
very high waist; she had a bracelet of green jade, a waistband of

green silk, and her hair was held by a wreath of artificial
laurel, very stiff and green. Her arms were full of big rolls of

cartridge paper and tracing paper. "I'm so pleased," she said.
"It's 'eady at last and I can show you."

She banged the whole armful down upon a vivid little table of
inlaid black and white wood. He rescued one or two rolls and a

sheet of tracing paper from the floor.
"It's the Temple," she panted in a significantwhisper. "It's

the Temple of the One T'ue God!"
She scrabbled among the papers, and held up the elevation of a

strange square building to his startled eyes. "Iszi't it just
pe'fect?" she demanded.

He took the drawing from her. It represented a building,
manifestly an enormous building, consisting largely of two great,

deeply fluted towers flanking a vast archway approached by a long
flight of steps. Between the towers appeared a dome. It was as if

the Mosque of Saint Sophia had produced this offspring in a
mesalliance with the cathedral of Wells. Its enormity was made

manifest by the minuteness of the large automobiles that were
driving away in the foreground after "setting down." "Here is the

plan," she said, thrusting another sheet upon him before he could
fully take in the quality of the design. "The g'eat Hall is to be

pe'fectly 'ound, no aisle, no altar, and in lettas of sapphiah,
'God is ev'ywhe'.'"

She added with a note of solemnity" target="_blank" title="n.庄严；(隆重的)仪式">solemnity, "It will hold th'ee
thousand people sitting down."

"But--!" said Scrope.
"The'e's a sort of g'andeur," she said. "It's young Venable's

wo'k. It's his fl'st g'ate oppo'tunity."
"But--is this to go on that little site in Aldwych?"

"He says the' isn't 'oom the'!" she explained. "He wants to put
it out at Golda's G'een."

"But--if it is to be this little simple chapel we proposed,
then wasn't our idea to be central?"

"But if the' isn't 'oem! "she said--conclusively. "And isn't
this--isn't it rather a costly undertaking, rather more costly--"

"That docsn't matta. I'm making heaps and heaps of money. Half
my p'ope'ty is in shipping and a lot of the 'eat in munitions.

I'm 'icher than eva. Isn't the' a sort of g'andeur?" she pressed.
He put the elevation down. He took the plan from her hands and

seemed to study it. But he was really staring blankly at the
whole situation.

"Lady Sunderbund," he said at last, with an effort, "I am
afraid all this won't do."

"Won't do!"
"No. It isn't in the spirit of my intention. It isn't in a

great building of this sort--so--so ornate and imposing, that
the simple gospel of God's Universal Kingdom can be preached."

"But oughtn't so gate a message to have as g'ate a pulpit?"
And then as if she would seize him before he could go on to

further repudiations, she sought hastily among the drawings
again.

"But look," she said. "It has ev'ything! It's not only a
p'eaching place; it's a headquarters for ev'ything."

With the rapid movements of an excited child she began to
thrust the remarkable features and merits of the great project

upon him. The preaching dome was only the heart of it. There were
to be a library, "'efecto'ies," consultation rooms, classrooms, a

publication department, a big underground printing establishment.
"Nowadays," she said, "ev'y gate movement must p'int." There was

to be music, she said, "a gate invisible o'gan," hidden amidst
the architectural details, and pouring out its sounds into the

dome, and then she glanced in passing at possible "p'ocessions"
round the preaching dome. This preaching dome was not a mere

shut-in drum for spiritual reverberations, around it ran great
open corridors, and in these corridors there were to be

"chapels."
"But what for?" he asked, stemming the torrent. "What need is

there for chapels? There are to be no altars, no masses, no
sacraments?"

"No," she said, "but they are to be chapels for special
int'ests; a chapel for science, a chapel for healing, a chapel

for gov'ment. Places for peoples to sit and think about those
things--with paintings and symbols."

"I see your intention," he admitted. "I see your intention."
"The' is to be a gate da'k blue 'ound chapel for sta's and

atoms and the myst'ry of matta." Her voice grew solemn. "All
still and deep and high. Like a k'ystal in a da'k place. You will

go down steps to it. Th'ough a da'k 'ounded a'ch ma'ked with
mathematical symbols and balances and scientific app'atus.... And

the ve'y next to it, the ve'y next, is to be a little b'ight
chapel for bi'ds and flowas!"

"Yes," he said, "it is all very fine and expressive. It is, I
see, a symbolical building, a great artisticpossibility. But is

it the place for me? What I have to say is something very simple,
that God is the king of the whole world, king of the ha'penny

newspaper and the omnibus and the vulgareveryday things, and
that they have to worship him and serve him as their leader in

every moment of their lives. This isn't that. This is the old
religions over again. This is taking God apart. This is putting

him into a fresh casket instead of the old one. And.... I don't
like it."

"Don't like it," she cried, and stood apart from him with her
chin in the air, a tall astonishment and dismay.

"I can't do the work I want to do with this."
"But--Isn't it you' idea?"

"No. It is not in the least my idea. I want to tell the whole
world of the one God that can alone unite it and save it--and