Bunning gulped and gripped the baggy knees of his trousers.
"I'm very unhappy," he said at last desperately—"very. And if you hadn't come with me the other night to hear Med-Tetloe—I'm sure I don't know why you did—I shouldn't have come now—-"
"Well, what's the matter?"
Bunning's mouth was full of toast. "It was that night—that service. I was very worked up and I went round afterwards to speak to him. I could see, you know, that it hadn't touched you at all. I could see that, and then when I went round to see him he hadn't got anything to say—nothing that I wanted—and—suddenly—then—at that moment—I felt it was all no good. It was you, you made me feel like that—-"
"I?"
"Yes. If you hadn't gone—like that—it would have been different. But when you—the last man in College to care about it-went and gave it its chance I thought that would prove it. And then when I went to him he was so silly, Med-Tetloe I mean. Oh! I can't describe it but it was just no use and I began to feel that it was all no good. I don't believe there is a God at all—it's all been wrong—I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. I've been wretched for days, not sleeping or anything. And then they come and rag me—and—and—the Union men want me to take Cards round for a Prayer Meeting—and—and—I wouldn't, and they said. . . . Oh! I don't know, I don't know what to do—I haven't got any-thing left!"
And here, to Olva's intense dismay, the wretched creature burst into the most passionate and desperate tears, putting his great hands over his face, his whole body sobbing. It was desolation—the desolation of a human being who had clutched desperately at hope after hope, who had demanded urgently that he should be given something to live for and had had all things snatched from his hands.
Olva, knowing what his own loneliness was, and the terror of it, understood. A fortnight ago he would have hated the scene, have sent Bunning, with a cutting word, flying from the room, never to return.
"I say, Bunning, you mustn't carry on like this—you're overdone or something. Besides, I don't understand. What does it matter if you have grown to distrust Med-Tetloe and all that crowd. They aren't the only people in the world—that isn't the only sort of religion."
"It's all I had. I haven't got anything now. They don't want me at home. They don't want me here. I'm not clever. I can't do anything. . . . And now God's gone. . . . I think I'll drown myself."