something."

"It is true. I did."

"Then--"

"Let us sit down in this shelter. There is no one in it. People are going
home."

Malling followed him into a shelter, with a bench facing the sea.

"I thought perhaps here I might be able to tell you," said Mr. Harding.
"I am in great trouble, Mr. Malling, in great trouble. But I don't know
whether you, or whether any one, can assist me."

"If I may advise you, I should say--tell me plainly what your trouble
is."

"It began--" Mr. Harding spoke with a faltering voice--"it began a good
while ago, some months after Mr. Chichester came as a curate to St.
Joseph's. I was then a very different man from the man you see now.
Often I feel really as if I were not the same man, as if I were radically
changed. It may be health. I sometimes try to think so. And then I--" He
broke off.

The strange weakness that Malling had already noticed seemed again to be
stealing over him, like a mist, concealing, attenuating.

"Possibly it is a question of health," said Malling, rather sharply.
"Tell me how it began."

"When Chichester first joined me, I was a man of power and ambition. I
was a man who could dominate others, and I loved to dominate."

His strength seemed returning while he spoke, as if frankness were to him
a restorative of the spirit.

"It was indeed my passion. I loved authority. I loved to be in command.
I was full of ecclesiastical ambition. Feeling that I had intellectual
strength, I intended to rise to the top of the church, to become a bishop
eventually, perhaps even something greater. When I was presented to St.
Joseph's,--my wife's social influence had something to do with that,--I
saw all the gates opening before me. I made a great effect in London.
I may say with truth that no clergyman was more successful than I was--at
one time. My wife spurred me on. She was immensely ambitious for me. I
must tell you that in marrying me she had gone against all her family.
They thought me quite unworthy of her notice. But from the first time I
met her I meant to marry her. And as I dominated others, I completely
dominated her. But she, once married to me, was desperately anxious that
I should rise in the world, in order that her choice of me might be
justified in the eyes of her people. You can understand the position, I
dare say?"

"Perfectly," said Malling.

"I may say that she irritated my ambition, that she stung it into almost
a furious activity. Women have gre