"You wouldn't be here otherwise."
"I did not come here exactly because of that," Uniacke said slowly.
"Rather to forget something."
"I doubt if this is a place which could teach one to forget. I find it quite otherwise."
The two men looked at each other, the elderly painter on his height of fame, the young clergyman in his depth of obscurity, and each felt that there was a likeness between them.
"I came here to forget a woman," Uniacke said at last, moved by a strange impulse to speak out.
"Yes, I see. It is the old idea of sorrowful men, a hermitage. I have often wondered in London, in Rome, in Athens, whether a hermitage is of any avail. Men went out into the desert in old days. Legend has it that holiness alone guided them there. All their disciples believed that. Reading about them I have often doubted it."
He smiled rather coldly and cynically.
"You don't know what a hermitage can mean. You have only been here three days. Besides, you come in search of—"