ings nor by Chichester's excellence of character.
I had always felt myself set far above him by my superior mental
faculties and my greater will power over the crowd, though, alas! not
always over my own demon. I began to writhe now under the thought of
Chichester's crystal purity and of my own besmirched condition of soul.
All self-confidence departed from me; but I endeavored, of course, to
conceal this from the world, and especially from Chichester. With the
world for a time no doubt I succeeded. But with Chichester--did I ever
succeed? Could I ever succeed with such an one as he had become? It
seemed to me, it seems to me far more terribly now, that nothing I did,
or was, escaped him. He attended mentally, spiritually even, to
everything that made up me. At first I felt this curiously, then
anxiously, then often with bitter contempt and indignation, sometimes
with a great melancholy, a sort of wide-spreading sadness in which I
was involved as in an icy sea. I can never make you fully understand
what I felt, how this mental and spiritual observation of Chichester
affected me. It--it simply ate me away, Malling! It simply ate me away!"

The last words came from Mr. Harding's lips almost in a cry.

"And how long did you continue the sittings?"

Very quietly Malling spoke, and he just touched the rector's arm.

"For a long while."

"Had you ceased from them when I first met you?"

"On Westminster Bridge? No."

"Have you ceased from them now?"

The rector shifted as if in physical distress.

"Chichester constrains me to them even now," he replied, like a man
bitterly ashamed. "He constrains me to them. And is that goodness,
righteousness? I said he was a saint; but now! Is it saintliness to
torture a fellow-creature?"

Malling remembered how he had once, and not long ago, asked himself
whether Chichester's mouth and eyes looked good.

"Have you ever told Chichester what grave distress he is causing you?"
said Malling.

"No, never, never! I can't!"

"Why not?"

"A great reserve has grown up between us. I could never try to break
through it."

"You say a great reserve. But does he never criticize you in words? Does
he never express an adverse opinion upon what you say or do?"

"Scarcely ever--after it is said or done. But sometimes--"

"Yes?"

"Sometimes--often I think--he tries to prevent me from saying or doing
something. Often he checks me with a look when I am in the midst of
some speech. It is