“It’s a pity,” said the theologian, “that Ninsy couldn’t bring herself to marry that boy. There’s something morbid in the way she talks. I met her in Nevil’s Gully yesterday, and I had quite a long conversation with her.”
Luke looked sharply at him. “Have you yourself ever seen her, across there?” he asked making a gesture in the direction of the churchyard.
Mr. Taxater shook his head. “Have you?” he demanded.
Luke nodded.
A sudden silence fell upon them. The rain beat in redoubled fury upon the window, and they could hear it pattering on the roof and falling in a heavy stream from the pipe above the eaves.
The younger man felt as though some tragic intimation, uttered in a tongue completely beyond the reach of both of them, were beating about for entry, at closed shutters.
Mr. Taxater felt no sensation of this kind. “Non est reluctandum cum Deo” were the sage words with which he raised his glass to his lips.
Luke remained motionless staring at the window, and thinking of a certain shrouded figure, with hollow cheeks and crossed hands, to whom this rain was nothing, and less than nothing.
Once more there was silence between them, as though a flock of noiseless night-birds were flying over the house, on their way to the far-off sea.
“How is Mrs. Seldom getting on?” enquired Luke, pushing back his chair. “Is Vennie allowed to write to her from that place?”