hadn't got anything to say--nothing
that I wanted--and--suddenly--then--at that moment--I felt it was all
no good. It was you, you made me feel like that---"

"I?"

"Yes. If you hadn't gone--like that--it would have been different. But
when you--the last man in College to care about it-went and gave it its
chance I thought that would prove it. And then when I went to him he was
so silly, Med-Tetloe I mean. Oh! I can't describe it but it was just no
use and I began to feel that it was all no good. I don't believe there
is a God at all--it's all been wrong--I don't know what to do. I don't
know where to go. I've been wretched for days, not sleeping or anything.
And then they come and rag me--and--and--the Union men want me to take
Cards round for a Prayer Meeting--and--and--I wouldn't, and they said.
. . . Oh! I don't know, I don't know _what_ to do--I haven't got
any-thing left!"

And here, to Olva's intense dismay, the wretched creature burst into the
most passionate and desperate tears, putting his great hands over his
face, his whole body sobbing. It was desolation--the desolation of a
human being who had clutched desperately at hope after hope, who had
demanded urgently that he should be given something to live for and had
had all things snatched from his hands.

Olva, knowing what his own loneliness was, and the terror of it,
understood. A fortnight ago he would have hated the scene, have sent
Bunning, with a cutting word, flying from the room, never to return.

"I say, Bunning, you mustn't carry on like this--you're overdone or
something. Besides, I don't understand. What does it matter if you
_have_ grown to distrust Med-Tetloe and all that crowd. They aren't the
only people in the world--that isn't the only sort of religion."

"It's all I had. I haven't got anything now. They don't want me at home.
They don't want me here. I'm not clever. I can't do anything. . . . And
now God's gone. . . . I think I'll drown myself."

"Nonsense. You mustn't talk like that--God's never gone."

Bunning dropped his hands, looked up, his face ridiculous with its
tear-stains.

"You think there's a God?"

"I know there's a God."

"Oh!" Bunning sighed.

"But you mustn't take it from me, you know. You must think it out for
yourself. Everybody has to."

"Yes--but you matter--more to me than--any one."

"I?"

"Yes." Bunning looked at the floor and began to speak very fast. "You've
always seemed to me wonderful--so dif