She pondered intensely and rushed in just in time to prevent his speaking again.
“I should like him I know—I’ve come across extracts in other books.”
“He is a great man; my favourite companion. I spend most of my leisure up here with Plato.”
“What a delightful life” said Miriam enviously, looking about the small crowded room.
“As much time as I can spare from my work at the Institute and the Mission chapel; they fill my active hours.”
Where would a woman, a wife-woman, be in a life like this? He poured himself out a cup of tea; the eyes turned towards the tea-pot were worried and hurried; his whole compact rounded form was a little worried and anxious. There was something—bunnyish about him. Reading Plato the expression of his person would still have something of the worried rabbit about it. His face would be calm and intent. Then he would look up from the page, taking in a thought and something in his room would bring him back again to worry. But he was too stout to belong to a religious order.
“You must have a very busy life” said Miriam, her attention wandering rapidly off hither and thither.
“Of course” he said turning away from the table to the fire beside which she sat. “I think the clergy should keep in touch to some extent with modern thought—in so far as it helps them with their own particular work.”
Miriam wondered why she felt no desire to open the subject of religion and science; or any other subject. It was so extraordinary to find herself sitting tête-à-tête with a clergyman, and still more strange to find him communicatively trying to show her his life from the inside. He went on talking, not looking at her but gazing into the fire. She tried in vain to tether her attention. It was straining away to work upon something, upon some curious evidence it had collected since she came into the room; and even with her eyes fixed upon his person and her mind noting the strange contradiction between the thin rippling many-buttoned cassock and the stout square-toed boots protruding beneath it, she could not completely convince herself that he was there.
“... novels; my friends to recommend any that might be helpful.”