"But, grandfather, the things we believe aren't so very different, and I like to pray in their chapel."
"Why not pray in your own kirk?"
"It's so bare."
"There's nothing to distract your thoughts."
"And I like the singing, and the lights and the candles—"
"We need no candles; we have light enough in our souls."
But Bruce had loved the smell of the incense, and the purple and red of the robes, and, seeing it all through the golden haze of the lights, his sense of beauty had been satisfied, as it was not satisfied in his own plain house of worship.
Yet it had been characteristic of the boy as it was of the man that neither kirk nor chapel held him, and he had gone through life liking each a little, but neither overmuch.
Something of this he tried to express to Jean as, arriving at Woodstock in the early afternoon, they passed the College. "I might have been a priest," he said, "if I hadn't been too much of a Puritan or a Pagan. I am not sure which held me back—"
Jean shuddered. "How can people shut themselves away from the world?"