his watch. "Besides I fancy I am not altogether a welcome visitor.
My host has not deigned to say one word to me; he simply sits and
blinks."

Kunin took up his hat, waited for Father Yakov to return, and said
good-bye to him.

"I have simply wasted the morning," he thought wrathfully on the
way home. "The blockhead! The dummy! He cares no more about the
school than I about last year's snow. . . . No, I shall never get
anything done with him! We are bound to fail! If the Marshal knew
what the priest here was like, he wouldn't be in such a hurry to
talk about a school. We ought first to try and get a decent priest,
and then think about the school."

By now Kunin almost hated Father Yakov. The man, his pitiful,
grotesque figure in the long crumpled robe, his womanish face, his
manner of officiating, his way of life and his formal restrained
respectfulness, wounded the tiny relic of religious feeling which
was stored away in a warm corner of Kunin's heart together with his
nurse's other fairy tales. The coldness and lack of attention with
which Father Yakov had met Kunin's warm and sincere interest in
what was the priest's own work was hard for the former's vanity to
endure. . . .

On the evening of the same day Kunin spent a long time walking about
his rooms and thinking. Then he sat down to the table resolutely
and wrote a letter to the bishop. After asking for money and a
blessing for the school, he set forth genuinely, like a son, his
opinion of the priest at Sinkino.