"My father's a parson in Yorkshire. They're all clergymen in my family—uncles, cousins, everybody—my elder brother. I was to have been a clergyman."
"Was to have been? Aren't you going to be one now?"
"No—not since I met you."
"Oh, but you mustn't take such a step on my account. I don't want to prevent you. I've nothing to do with it. I should think you'd make a very good parson."
Olva was brutal. He felt that in Bunning's moist devoted eyes there was a dim pain. But he was brutal because his whole soul revolted against sentimentality, not at all because his soul revolted against Bunning.
"No, I shouldn't make a good parson. I never wanted to be one really. But when your house is full of it, as our house was, you're driven. When it wasn't relations it was all sorts of people in the parish—helpers and workers—women mostly. I hated them."
Here was a real note of passion! Bunning seemed, for an instant, to be quite vigorous.
"That's why I'm so untidy now," Bunning went desperately on; "nobody cared how I looked. I was stupid at school, my reports were awful, and I was a day boy. It is very bad for any one to be a day boy—very!" he added reflectively, as though he were recalling scenes and incidents.
"Yes?" said Olva encouragingly. He was being drawn by Bunning's artless narration away from the Shadow. It was still there, its arm outstretched above the snowy court, but Bunning seemed, in some odd way, to intervene.
"I always wanted to find God in those days. It sounds a stupid thing to say, but they used to speak about Him—mother and the rest—just as though He lived down the street. They knew all about Him and I used to wonder why I didn't know too. But I didn't. It wasn't real to me. I used to make myself think that it was, but it wasn't."