"The effect on my own soul is perfectly ghastly. I positively loathe and distrust all Catholics, known and unknown, with one exception. I have become a rudderless derelict. I have lost all faith in man, and I have lost the power of loving."
"How terrible!" the cardinal sighed. "And are there none of us for whom you have a kindly feeling? At times, I mean? You cannot always be in a state of white-hot rage, you know. There must be intervals when the tension of your anger is relaxed, perhaps from sheer fatigue: for anger is deliberate, the effect of exertion. And, in those intervals, have you never caught yourself thinking kindly of any of your former friends?"
"Yes, Eminency, there are very many, clerks and laics both, with whom, strange to say, when my anger is not dynamic, I sometimes wish to be reconciled. However, I myself never will approach them; and they afford me no opportunity. They do not come to me, as you have come." His voice softened a little; and his smile was an alluring illumination.
"But you would meet them with vituperation; and naturally they don't want to expose themselves to affronts?"
"Oh, of course if their sense of duty (to say nothing of decency) does not teach them to risk affronts——But I will not say before hand how I should meet them beyond this: it would depend on their demeanour to me. I should do as I am done by. For example," he turned to the ruddy bishop, "did I heave chairs or china-ware at Your Lordship?"
"Indeed you did not, although I thoroughly deserved both. Yrmnts,"[2] the young prelate continued, "I believe I understand Mr. Rose's frame of mind. He has been hit very hard; and he's badly bruised. He is a burnt child; and he dreads the fire. It's only natural. I'm firmly convinced that he has been more sinned against than sinning; and, though I'm sorry to see him practically keeping us at arms' length, I really don't know what else we can expect until we treat him as we ourselves would like to be treated."
"True, true," the cardinal conceded.
"But it's a pity all the same," the bishop concluded.
The cardinal audibly thought, "You have perhaps not many very kindly feelings towards me personally, Mr. Rose."
"I have no kindly feelings at all toward Your Eminency; and I believe you to be aware of my reasons. I trust that I never should be found wanting in reverence to your Sacred Purple: but apart from that—" indignant recollection stiffened and inflamed the speaker—"indeed I only am speaking civilly to you now because you are the successor of Augustine and Theodore and Dunstan and Anselm and Chichele and Chichester, and because my friend the Bishop of Caerleon has made you my guest for the nonce. My Lord Cardinal, I do not know what you want of me, nor why you have come to me: but let me tell you that you shall not entangle me again in my talk. You are going the Catholic way to work with me; and that is the wrong way. Frankness and open honesty is the only way to win me—if you want me."