ay a gradual transference, instead of disintegration
of soul. For it seemed to me as if the man who watched might gradually,
as it were, absorb into himself the soul of the double, but purified. For
the watcher has the tremendous advantage of seeing the hypocrite living
the hypocrite's life, while the hypocrite is only seen. Might not the
former, therefore, conceivably draw in strength, while the other faded
into weakness? Ignorance is the terrible thing in life, I think. Now the
man who watched would receive knowledge, fearful knowledge, but the man
who was watched, while perhaps suffering first uneasiness, then possibly
even terror, would not, in my conception, ever clearly understand. He
would not any longer dare at night to sit down alone to fill up that
dreadful diary. He would not any longer perhaps--I only say perhaps--dare
to commit the deeds the record of which in the past the diary held. But
his lesson would be one of fear, making for weakness, finally almost for
nothingness. And the other night I conceived of him at last fading away
in the gloom of his room with the darkened window."

"That was your end!" said Mr. Harding, in a low voice.

"Yes, that was my end."

"Then," said Chichester, "you think the lesson men learn from being
contemplated tends only to destroy them?"

But Malling, now with a smiling change to greater lightness and ease,
hastened to traverse this statement.

"No, no," he replied. "For the contemplation of a man by his fellow-men
must always be an utterly different thing from his own contemplation by
himself. For our fellow-men always remain in a very delightful ignorance
of us. Don't they, Lady Sophia? And so they can never destroy us, luckily
for us."

He had done what he wished to do, and he was now ready for other
activities. But he found it was not easy to switch his companions off
onto another trail. Lady Sophia, now that he looked at her closely, he
saw to be under the influence of fear, provoked doubtless by the subject
they had been discussing. Chichester, also, had a look as of fear in his
eyes. As to the rector, he sat gazing at his curate, and there had come
upon his countenance an expression of almost unnatural resolution, such
as a coward's might wear if terror forced him into defiance.

In reply to Malling's half-laughing question, Lady Sophia said:

"You've studied all these things, haven't you?"

"Do you mean what are sometimes called occult questions?"

"Yes."