Broke everything up, simply because she was unlike other people.
He'd married her because he thought he could make her into what he pleased.Well, it had been the other way.Oh, she was queer, queer, queer.
He stopped, his large boots in a warm puddle.He felt the warm sun hot through the damp mist.He wanted to take her into his arms, to hug her, above all to feel her response.To feel her response, that was what, for years now, he had been wanting, and never once had she responded.Never once.She let him do as he pleased, but she was passive.She didn't love him.Grace loved him, but how dull Grace was! Dull--it was all dull! Grace was dull, Skeaton was dull, the church was dull--God was dull! God? Where was God? He looked around.
There was no God.To what had he been praying all these years? He had not been praying.His congregation had not been praying.They were all dead and God was dead too.
He looked up and saw that his boots were in a puddle.He walked on.
For a moment, the mists of sloth and self-indulgence that had for years obscured his vision had shifted and cleared, but even as he moved they settled down and resolved themselves once more.The muscles of Paul's soul were stiff with disuse.Training is a lengthy affair and a tiresome business to the stout and middle-aged.