As they stepped out together into the street, Lindsay thrust his hand
within Arnold's elbow. It was an impulse, and the analysis of it would
show elements like self-reproach, and a sense of value continually
renewed, and a vain desire for an absolutely common ground. The physical
nearness, the touch, was something, and each felt it in the remoteness
of his other world with satisfaction. There was absurdly little in what
they had to say to each other; they talked of the Viceroy's attack of
measles and the sanitary improvements in the cloth-dealers' quarter.
Their bond was hardly more than a mutual decency of nature, niceness of
sentiment, clearness of eye. Such as it was, it was strong enough to
make both men wish it were stronger, a desire which was a vague
impatience on Lindsay's part with a concentration of hostility to
Arnold's _soutane_. It made its universal way for them, however, this
garment. Where the crowd was thickest people jostled and pressed with
one foot in the gutter for the convenience of the padre-sahib. He, with
his eyes cast down, took the tribute with humility; as meet, in a way
that made Lindsay blaspheme inwardly at the persistence of
ecclesiastical tradition.
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