He made an admirable listener,
quick, courteous, adaptable, yet with something in reserve (you may call
it a facile tolerance, if you will) which ended by irritating me.
Young men should be eager, fervid, _sublimis cupidusque_, as I was
before my beard grew stiff. But this young man had the air of a
spectator at a play, composing himself to be amused. There was too much
wisdom in him and too little emotion. We did not, of course, touch upon
any religious question--indeed, of his own opinions on any subject he
disclosed extraordinarily little: and yet as I reached my bedroom that
night I told myself that here, behind a mask of good manners, was one of
those perniciously modern young men who have run through all beliefs by
the age of twenty, and settled down to a polite but weary atheism.
I fancy that under the shadow of this suspicion my own manner may have
been cold to him next morning. Almost immediately after breakfast we
set out for the church. The day was sunny and warm; the atmosphere
brilliant after the night's rain. The hedges exhaled a scent of spring.
And, as we entered the churchyard, I saw the girl Julia Constantine
seated in her favourite angle between the porch and the south wall,
threading a chain of daisies.
"What an amazingly handsome girl!" my guest exclaimed.
"Why, yes," said I, "she has her good looks, poor soul!"
"Why 'poor soul'?"
"She is an imbecile, or nearly so," said I, fitting the key in the lock.
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