I knew that the sort of society to be found in that place would minister to my most urgent need.  I craved some intellectual clanship which should never seek to rise to an equal spiritual companionship.  For there was only one man to whom I might speak freely, and from him my path ever diverged.  How far apart the years had led us!  Sometimes there came a whisper that I had been snatched from the hand of Satan, killer of souls; sometimes my only opportunities of salvation seemed left in that sad, damp homestead.  I could never return to him; I could never be wholly free from him.  Ever was I controlled by a shadowy force which reached me from his abundant power.  No occupation was so absorbing as to protect me from the invading presence of Herbert Vannelle.

* * * * *

The first Sunday of the present month brought the twentieth anniversary of the day that I parted from Vannelle.  In the morning I had preached a written sermon on those solemn words of the Apostle, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”  For the first time I shrank from the consciousness that the words uttered were true to me in a very different sense from that in which the congregation received them.  I found it difficult to poise in tremulous balance between Truth and its available representation to common men.  It is my custom to preach extemporaneously in the afternoon.  Upon rising, after the introductory services, I could perceive that my pulse and breathing were accelerated.  A certain numbness of the brain seemed pierced with convulsive, fugitive shocks.  An inexplicable influence, a command for cerebral sympathy, seemed beating at my forehead.  I turned the sacred pages before me, but could find nothing upon which to base my remarks.  But to my lips would come incessantly a passage from Sir Thomas Browne.  At last I gave it voice:—­

“There are, as in philosophy, so in divinity, sturdy doubts and boisterous objections wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us.  More of these no man hath known than myself; which I confess I conquered, not in martial attitude, but on my knees.”

An extraordinary impetus seemed imparted to my mental powers.  Men have said that I spoke with a fluency and eloquence unknown to them before.  Indeed, I was conscious of a capacity to receive and convey such portions of divine wisdom as corresponded to their needs.  To speak in figure, my heavenly race was as if the Lord of Evil pursued my soul.

Thoroughly exhausted by the effort, I returned to my study and threw myself upon a sofa.  More fully than ever before, I entered that state where one far distant may make himself perceived and known.  The occult power of foreknowing events, the delicate perception of forbidden things, worked their abnormal invigoration in the brain.  I became conscious that a carriage miles off was rolling nearer and nearer; I knew that it would stop at my door.  I waited, waited long into the night.  One by one went out the scattered village-lights.  Another consciousness of twenty years seemed compressed into those brilliant, bitter hours.  My lamp flickered.  I rose with effort and supplied oil; it would now burn till morning.  The carriage came nearer.  I knew that Vannelle was in it.  At last the heavy rumble ceased at the door.