'No; at least I suppose it will be no good my trying for a fellowship. But I meant to tell you, sir, of one thing—I have made up my mind to take orders.'
'You have? When?'
'Quite lately. So that fixes me, I suppose, to come back for divinity lectures in the autumn.'
Mr. Grey said nothing for a while, and they strolled in and out of the great shadows thrown by the elms across their path.
'You feel no difficulties in the way?' he asked at last, with a certain quick brusqueness of manner.
'No,' said Robert eagerly. 'I never had any. Perhaps,' he added, with a sudden humility, 'it is because I have never gone deep enough. What I believe might have been worth more if I had had more struggle; but it has all seemed so plain.'
The young voice speaking with hesitation and reserve, and yet with a deep inner conviction, was pleasant to hear. Mr. Grey turned towards it, and the great eyes under the furrowed brow had a peculiar gentleness of expression.
'You will probably be very happy in the life,' he said. 'The Church wants men of your sort.'
But through all the sympathy of the tone Robert was conscious of a veil between them. He knew, of course, pretty much what it was, and with a sudden impulse he felt that he would have given worlds to break through it and talk frankly with this man whom he revered beyond all others, wide as was the intellectual difference between them. But the tutor's reticence and the younger man's respect prevented it.
When the unlucky second class was actually proclaimed to the world, Langham took it to heart perhaps more than either Elsmere or his mother. No one knew better than he what Elsmere's gifts were. It was absurd that he should not have made more of them in sight of the public. 'Le cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi!' was about the gist of Langham's mood during the days that followed on the class list.