He hesitated again for words.
"You are sure you'd better? I know you've been ill. I don't want to—-"
Monsignor waved it away with a little gesture.
"That's all right," he said. "I'm not ill now. I wish to God I were!"
"Quietly, please," said the young man.
He swallowed in his throat and rearranged himself in his chair. He felt himself alone and abandoned, even where he had been certain of an emotional sympathy.
"I know I'm clean against public opinion in what I think. I've learnt that at last. I thought at first that it was the other way, as . . . as I think it must have been a hundred years ago. But I see now that all the world is against me—all except perhaps the people who are called infidels."
"You mean the Socialists?"
"Yes, I suppose so. Well, it seems to me that the Church is . . ." (he hesitated, to pick his words) "is assuming an impossible attitude. Take your own case; though that's only one: it's the same everywhere. There are the sumptuary and domestic laws; there's the 'repression,' as they call it, of the Socialists. But take your own case. You are perfectly satisfied that your conclusions are scientific, aren't you?"
"Yes."