"I cannot answer that," said Mark. He was standing now with one elbow on the end of the chimney-piece, and his head resting on his right hand, looking down at the worn rug at his feet.
"Will you tell me exactly what it is they do say?" said Mark, still speaking with an effort at cheerfulness that aggravated the nervous state of Canon Nicholls.
And there followed another silence, during which Father Molyneux realised to himself with fear and almost horror that he was nearly having a quarrel with the friend he loved so much, and on whose kindness he had always counted, and whose wisdom had so often been his guide. He was suffering already almost more than he owned to himself, and he had come into the room of the holy, blind old man as to a place of refuge. It gave him a sick feeling of misery and helplessness that there seemed in the midst of his other troubles the possibility of a quarrel with Canon Nicholls. This at least he must prevent; and so, leaning forward, he said very gently:
"Do tell me a little bit more of what you mean? I know you are speaking as my friend, and, believe me, I am not ungrateful. I am sure there is a definite story against me. I wish you would call a spade a spade quite openly."
"They have got hold of a story that you are tired of poverty and the priesthood, and so on, and that you will give it all up if you can persuade a certain very rich woman to marry you."
"That is definite enough." Mark was struggling to speak without bitterness. "And, for a moment, you thought——?" he could not finish the sentence.
"Good God! not for a fraction of a second. How can you?"
"Oh! forgive me, forgive me; I didn't mean it."
Mark knelt down by the chair, tears were flowing from the blind eyes. Canon Nicholls belonged to a generation whose emotions were kept under stern control; the tears would have come more naturally from Mark. There was a strange contrast between the academic figure of the old man in its reserved and negative bearing, seriously annoyed with himself for betraying the suffering he was enduring, and yet unable to check the flow of tears, and the eager, unreserved, sympathetic attitude of the younger man. After a few moments of silence Mark rose and began to speak in low, quick accents——
"It is a secret which is doing infinite harm to a soul made for good things, and yet it is a secret which I can tell no one, not even you—at least, so I am convinced. But it is a secret by which people are suffering. The result is that I cannot deal with this calumny as I should deal with it if I were free; and I believe that I have not got to the worst of it yet. I see what it must lead to."