Malling paused.  The rector, with an almost violent movement of his big hand and arm, took his cup from the table and drank his tea.

“It didn’t occur to you, I suppose, when composing your sermon to follow that train of thought?” said Malling to Chichester.

“No,” replied the curate, slowly, and like one thinking profoundly.  “I was too engrossed with the feelings of the man.  But, then, you thought of the double as a living man, with all the sensations of a man?”

“That was your fault,” said Malling.

“His fault!” said Lady Sophia, with a sort of latent sharpness, and laying an emphasis on the second word.

“Certainly; for making the narrative so vital and human.”

He addressed himself again to the curate.

“Did you not give to the double the attributes of a man?  Did you not make his wife come to bid him good night, bend down to kiss him, waft him a characteristic farewell?”

“It is true.  I did,” said Chichester, still speaking like a man in deep thought.

“That was the most terrible part of all,” said Lady Sophia.  In her voice there was an accent almost of horror.  “It sickened me to the soul,” she continued—­“the idea of a woman bidding a tender good night to an apparition.”

“I took it as a man,” said Malling.

They had all three, strangely, left the rector out of this discussion, and he seemed willing that it should be so.  He now sat back in his chair listening to all that was being said, somewhat as he had listened to the sermon of Chichester, in a sort of ghastly silence.

“How could a man’s double be a man?” said Lady Sophia.

“We are in the region of assumption and of speculation,” returned Malling, quietly, “a not uninteresting region either, I think.  The other night for a whole hour, having assumed the double man, I speculated on his existence, spied upon by his other self.  And you never did that?”

He looked at Chichester.

“When I was making my sermon I was engrossed by the thought of the watching man.”

Malling’s idea had evidently laid a grip upon Chichester’s mind.

“Tell me what the double’s existence would be, according to you,” he said.  “Tell me.”

“You imagined the lesson learnt by the man so terrible that he fled away into the night.”

“Yes.”

“Had he been strong enough to stay—­”

“Strong enough!” interposed Chichester.  “Better say, had he been obliged to stay.”

“Very well.  Given that compulsion, in my imagination the double must have learnt a lesson, too.  If we can learn by contemplation, can we not, must we not, learn by being contemplated?  Life is permeated by reciprocity.  I can imagine another sermon growing out of yours of last Sunday.”

“Yes, you are right—­you are right,” said Chichester.