His voice, again, was remarkable.  It was not in ordinary talk either deep or profound, though it could and did become both on occasions, especially when he made a quotation, which he did with some solemnity.  I used at first to think that there was a touch of rhetorical affectation about his quotations.  They were made in a high musical tone, and as often as not ended with the tears coming into his eyes.  He spoke to me once about this.  He said that it was a mistake to think he was deeply affected by a quotation.  “In fact,” he said, “I am not easily affected by passionate or tragic emotion—­what does affect me is a peculiar touch of beauty, but it is a luxurious and superficial thing.  It would entirely prevent me,” he added, “from reading many poems or prose passages aloud which I greatly admire.  I simply could not command myself!  In fact,” he went on, smiling, “I very often can only get to the end of a quotation by fixing my mind on something else.  I add up the digits giving the number of the page, or I count the plates at the dinner-table.  It’s very absurd—­but it takes me in just the same way when I am alone.  I could not read the last chapter of the Book of Revelation aloud to myself, or the chapter on ‘The Wilderness’ in Isaiah, without shedding tears.  But it doesn’t mean anything; it is just the hysterica passio, you know!”

His voice, when he first joined in a talk, was often low and even hesitating; but when he became interested and absorbed, it gathered volume and emphasis.  Barthrop once said to me that Father Payne was the only person he knew who always talked in italics.  But he very seldom harangued, though it is difficult to make that clear in recording his talks, because he often spoke continuously.  Yet it was never a soliloquy:  he always included the listeners.  He used to look round at them, explore their faces, catch an eye and smile, indicate the particular person addressed by a darted-out finger; and he had many little free gestures with his hands as he talked.  He would trace little hieroglyphics with his finger, as if he were writing a word, sweep an argument aside, bring his hands together as though he were shaping something.  This was a little confusing at first, and used to divert my attention, because of the great mobility of his hands; but after a little it seemed to me to bring out and illustrate his points in a remarkably salient way.

His habits were curious and a little mysterious.  They were by no means regular.  Sometimes for days together we hardly saw him.  He often rose early and walked in the garden.  If he found a book which interested him, he would read it with absorbed attention, quite unconscious of the flight of time.  “I do love getting really buried in a book,” he would say; “it’s the best of tests.”  Sometimes he wrote, sometimes he composed music, sometimes he would have his table covered with bits of paper full of unintelligible designs and patterns.  He did not mind being questioned,