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Father Harty never spoke until he had lit the lamp and sunk into his easy chair by the fire. Then he put his head between his hands and rubbed his face from the temples to chin with the peculiar melancholy movement that was customary with him. Cleary, standing by the door, erect and motionless, felt pity and love for the priest. He was tender and kind to him, that priest. Why was he now afraid of that priest?

But it seemed to him now that some other being was sitting in the chair instead of the good priest, who had once been a great athlete and a heavy drinker. This middleaged man with the red face, on which a terrible mental suffering was stamped, was like an extraordinary and terrible being, merciless, insane, overpowered by a monstrous fanaticism that licked all tenderness and understanding out of his consciousness, like a devilish flame licking up the tender moisture of humanity, leaving only the charred bones of the terrible dogmas that had brought that constant suffering into his features. This was not the kind Father Harty but a terrible fanatic.

Cleary was only sixteen. He had not yet begun to think out of his own experience. Until now he had assimilated without question all the precepts that were offered to his mind, in the lecture rooms, in the chapel and in the study, where Father Harty gave sermons on personal conduct and on the lives of the saints. Cleary’s mind was hitherto just a receptacle for all these precepts, and he had shrunk in terror from any personal thought, lest it might lead him into doubt and sin. But now his consciousness had been completely roused by his terror and this first questioning of the justice of the situation in which he was placed. His superiors were not just, something suggested to him. And almost immediately his mind had begun to think independently and he doubted the wisdom of his superiors. And then a little wall had thrust itself in front of his own personality, and for the first time in his life he found himself standing behind this wall, ready to fight his superior. That was an enemy sitting in that chair. Not Father Harty whom he loved, but the embodiment of the terrible dogmas that made men do such cruel things as this, this terrible torture of a youth. That was an enemy.

With the extraordinary instinct of youthful persons, whose judgments are not deflected and obscured by elaborate reasonings, he could see the difference as clearly as if there were two persons sitting in the chair instead of one. And from that moment, when this difference became manifest to him, Cleary had ceased to believe in God with his whole soul as he had hitherto done. He no longer loved God as an omnipotent friend and father. He now feared him.

“Well,” said the priest heavily, without looking at Cleary, “this is terrible.”

There was a short silence. Cleary’s legs trembled and his head seemed to go round and round. The sacred pictures on the walls, the gleaming gilt backs of the books on the shelves, the dark polished wainscotting, the oilcloth on the floor, all seemed occult and terrifying to his eyes wandering about, trying to find some point on which to concentrate, instead of on the recumbent figure of the priest.

“How did this happen?” continued the priest sadly.”How did this terrible craze grow within you? If you had been lukewarm and … and casual in your devotions, I could perhaps have understood your giving way to this terrible temptation. But I had placed such faith in your purity. I had such hopes of you. Perhaps I encouraged you too much. Conceit is a terrible danger. Francis, tell me everything.”