his power to think clearly, as if it threw his brain
into an unwonted confusion which made him feel strangely powerless. He
was aware of a great uneasiness approaching, if not actually amounting to
fear. This uneasiness made him long for light. Yet he knew that he
dreaded light; for he was aware of an almost unconquerable reluctance to
look upon the face of his companion. Beset by conflicting desires,
therefore, and the prey of unwonted emotion, he sat like one paralyzed,
listening always to the faint ticking of the clock, and striving to
reduce what was almost like chaos to order in his brain.

"Why have you selected me to be the hearer of this--this very
extraordinary statement?" he forced himself at length to say prosaically.
The sound of his own dry voice somewhat reassured him, and he added:
"Though there is nothing very extraordinary in the facts you have
related. Telepathic communication between one mind and another is a
commonplace of to-day, an old story. Every one of course accepts it as
possible. What novelty do you claim to present to startle science?"

"I say that telepathy does not explain the link between Marcus Harding
and myself."

The professor struck his hand on the table. It seemed to him that if only
he could get into an argument this strange confusion and fear might leave
him. He would be on familiar ground.

"What you call vision might be merely mind-reading, what you call
perceiving the action of the spirit, mind-reading. Your terror lest
others should find out bad truths about Marcus Harding would spring
naturally enough from your lingering regard for him. Your acute anxiety
when he is preaching arises of course from the fact that, owing to bodily
causes, no doubt, his mental powers are failing him, and he is no longer
able to do himself justice."

"You don't understand. What I desired in our sittings was to draw into
myself strength, power, will from--him. What have I done? I have drawn
into myself the very man. That night when the shutter slipped back he
looked out from the body of Henry Chichester. His mind worked, his soul
was alive, within the cage of another man. And meanwhile Henry Chichester
lay as if submerged, but presently stirred, and, however feebly, lived
again. He lives now. But not from him comes my frightful comprehension of
Marcus Harding. Not him does Marcus Harding fear. Not to him does she,
the woman, look with the eyes of a slave. It is not he who dominates the
crowds