"Wells, H G - Soul Of A Bishop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

And instead of the discourse he had prepared for the
Shop-girls' Church Association, he had preached on temptation and
falling, and how he knew they had all fallen, and how he
understood and could sympathize with the bitterness of a secret
shame, a moving but unsuitable discourse that had already been
subjected to misconstruction and severe reproof in the local
press of Princhester.

But the haunting thing in the bishop's memory was the face and
gesture of the little boy. That grubby little finger stabbed him
to the heart.

"Oh, God!" he groaned. "The meanness of it! How did I bring
myself--?"

He turned out the light convulsively, and rolled over in the
bed, making a sort of cocoon of himself. He bored his head into
the pillow and groaned, and then struggled impatiently to throw
the bed-clothes off himself. Then he sat up and talked aloud.

"I must go to Brighton-Pomfrey," he said. "And get a medical
dispensation. If I do not smoke--"

He paused for a long time.

Then his voice sounded again in the darkness, speaking quietly,
speaking with a note almost of satisfaction.

"I shall go mad. I must smoke or I shall go mad."

For a long time he sat up in the great bed with his arms about
his knees.

(5)


Fearful things came to him; things at once dreadfully
blasphemous and entirely weak-minded.

The triangle and the eye became almost visible upon the black
background of night. They were very angry. They were spinning
round and round faster and faster. Because he was a bishop and
because really he did not believe fully and completely in the
Trinity. At one and the same time he did not believe in the
Trinity and was terrified by the anger of the Trinity at his
unbelief.... He was afraid. He was aghast.... And oh! he was
weary....

He rubbed his eyes.