This had often deeply distressed him and made him timid and shy in his dealings with men and women.

It was this, more than anything else, that held him back from the ambition to proselytise.

How could he go forth and challenge men's souls when he could not understand nor feel their difficulties?
More and more as his years advanced had he retired into himself, into his own mystical world of communion with a God who drew ever nearer and nearer to him.

He humbled himself before men; he did not believe himself better than they because he had not yielded to their temptations; but he could not help them; his tongue was tied; he was a man cut off from his fellows and he knew it.
He had never felt so impatient of his impotence as he did to-night.

For ten years he had been waiting for this interview with his son, and now that it was come he was timid and afraid as though he had been opposed by a stranger.