Only when he was letting his guest out into the night did he seem troubled once more.  He clasped Malling’s hand in his, as if almost unaware that he was doing so, and said with some hesitation: 

“Are you—­are you going to see the rector again?”

“Not that I know of,” said Malling, speaking the strict truth, and virtually telling a lie at the same time.

For he was determined, if possible, to see Mr. Harding, and that before very long.

“If I may say so,” Chichester said, shifting from one foot to another and looking down at the rain-sodden pavement, “I wouldn’t see him.”

“May I ask you why?”

“You may get a wrong impression.  Two years ago he was another man.  Strangers, of course, may not know it, not realize it.  But we who have lived with him do know it.  Mr. Harding is going down the hill.”

There was a note of deep sadness in his voice.  Had he been speaking of himself, of his own decadence, his tone could scarcely have been more melancholy.

And for long Malling remembered the look in his eyes as he drew back to shut his door.

In the rain Malling walked home as he had come.  But now it was deep in the night and his depression had deepened.  He was a self-reliant man, and not easily felt himself small, though he was not conceited.  To-night he felt diminished.  The worm-sensation overcame him.  That such a man as Chichester should have been able to convey to him such a sensation was strange, yet it was from Chichester that this mental chastisement had come.  For a moment Chichester had towered, and at that moment Malling surely had dwindled, shrunk together, like a sheet of paper exposed to the heat of a flame.

But that Chichester should have had such an effect on him—­Malling!

If Mr. Harding was going down the hill, Chichester surely was not.  He had changed drastically since Malling had known him two years ago.  In power, in force, he had gained.  He now conveyed the impression of a man capable, if he chose, of imposing himself on others.  Formerly he had been the wax that receives the impress.  But whereas formerly he had been a contented man, obviously at peace with himself and with the world, now he was haunted by some great anxiety, by some strange grief, or perhaps even by some fear.

“Few men know how terrible the face of the truth can be.”

Chichester had said that.

Was he one of the few men?

And was that why now, as Malling walked home in the darkness and rain, he felt himself humbled, diminished?

For Malling loved knowledge and thought men should live by it.  Had truth a Medusa face, still would he have desired to look into it once, would have been ready to endure a subsequent turning to stone.

That Chichester should perhaps have seen what he had not seen—­that troubled him, even humbled him.

Some words of Professor Stepton came back to his mind:  “If there’s anything in it, development will take place in the link.”  And those last words:  “If in doubt, study Lady Sophia.”