“It has changed?” he asked. “I can hardly believe⁠—”

“You have not heard, then?” observed the priest gently, making a gesture as though to cross himself, yet not actually completing it. “You have not heard what happened there before it was abandoned⁠—?”

It was very childish, of course, and perhaps he was overtired and overwrought in some way, but the words and manner of the little priest seemed to him so offensive⁠—so disproportionately offensive⁠—that he hardly noticed the concluding sentence. He recalled the old bitterness and the old antagonism, and for a moment he almost lost his temper.

“Nonsense,” he interrupted with a forced laugh, “ Unsinn! You must forgive me, sir, for contradicting you. But I was a pupil there myself. I was at school there. There was no place like it. I cannot believe that anything serious could have happened to⁠—to take away its character. The devotion of the Brothers would be difficult to equal anywhere⁠—”