There was no one there to see. He sank down upon the wooden
coping that protruded from the old wall and hid his face in his hands as
though he were too deeply ashamed to encounter even the dim faces of the
old wooden figures.
There was a stir in the room; the little door opened and closed; the bird,
with a flutter of wings, flew back to its corner. Brandon looked up and
saw a faint shadow of a man. He rose and took some steps towards the door,
then he stopped because be saw that the man was Davray the painter.
He had never spoken to this man, but be had hated everything that he had
ever heard about him. In the first place, to be an artist was, in the
Archdeacon's mind, synonymous with being a loose liver and an atheist.
Then this fellow was, as all the town knew, a drunkard, an idler, a
dissolute waster who had brought nothing upon Polchester but disgrace. Had
Brandon had his way he would, long ago, have had him publicly expelled and
forbidden ever to return. The thought that this man should be in the
Cathedral at all was shocking to him and, in his present mood, quite
intolerable.
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