He spoke as if he were reading out of a book some narrative from the Bible. Hyacinth realized suddenly that the communication which was to be made to him had been rehearsed by his father alone, again and again, that statement, question and reply, would follow each other in due sequence from the same lips. He felt that his father was still rehearsing, and had forgotten the real presence of his son. He grasped the hand that held him and shook it, saying sharply: ‘Father, father, I am here. Don’t you know me?’ ‘Yes, yes, my son. Surely I know you. There is something I want to tell you. I have wanted to tell it to you for many days. I am glad that you are here now to listen to it.’ He paused, and Hyacinth feared that he would relapse again into dreamy insensibility; but he did not. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I should like to pray before I speak to you.’ He knelt down as Hyacinth had seen him kneel a thousand times before, facing the eastward-looking window, now a black, uncurtained square in the whitewashed wall. What he said was almost unintelligible. There was no petition nor even any sequence of ideas which could be traced. He poured forth a series of ejaculations expressive of intense and rapturous delight, very strange to listen to in such a place and from an old man’s lips. Then the language he spoke changed from English into Gaelic, and there came a kind of hymn of adoration. His sentences followed each other in metrical balance like the Latin of the old liturgies, and suited themselves naturally to a subdued melody, half chant, half cry, like the mourning of the keeners round a grave. At last, rising from his knees, he spoke, and his voice became wholly unemotional, devoid of fervour or excitement. He told his story as a man might relate some quite commonplace incident of daily life.