“You remember our former conversations with regard to Henry Chichester?” he said abruptly, changing the subject of their discourse.

“Chichester?  Yes—­yes.  What of him?”

“I wish to tell you that I think you are right, that I think there is an extraordinary, even an amazing, change in Chichester.”

“There is, indeed,” said Mr. Harding.  “And—­and it will increase.”

He spoke with a sort of despairing conviction.

“What makes you think so?”

“It must.  It cannot be otherwise—­unless—­”

He paused.

“Yes,” said Malling; “unless—­”

“A thing almost impossible were to happen.”

“May I, without indiscretion, ask what that is?”

“Unless he were to leave St. Joseph’s, to go quite away.”

“Surely that would not be impossible!”

“I often think it is.  Chichester will not wish to go.”

“Are you certain of that?” asked Malling, remembering the curate’s remark in Horton Street, that perhaps he would not remain at St. Joseph’s much longer.

The rector turned his head and fixed his eyes upon Malling.

“Has he said anything to you about leaving?” he asked, suddenly raising his voice, as if under the influence of excitement.  “But of course he has not.”

“Surely it is probable that such a man may be offered a living.”

“He would not take it.”

They walked on a few steps in silence, turned, and strolled back.  It was now growing dark.  Their faces were set toward the distant gleam of the Herne Bay lights.

“I am not so sure,” at length dropped out Malling.

“Why are you not so sure?”

“Why do you think Chichester’s departure from St. Joseph’s impossible?”

Malling spoke strongly to determine, if possible, the rector to speak, to say out all that was in his heart.

“Can I tell you?” Mr. Harding almost murmured.  “Can I tell you?”

“I think you asked me here that you might tell me something.”

“It is true.  I did.”

“Then—­”

“Let us sit down in this shelter.  There is no one in it.  People are going home.”

Malling followed him into a shelter, with a bench facing the sea.

“I thought perhaps here I might be able to tell you,” said Mr. Harding.  “I am in great trouble, Mr. Malling, in great trouble.  But I don’t know whether you, or whether any one, can assist me.”

“If I may advise you, I should say—­tell me plainly what your trouble is.”

“It began—­” Mr. Harding spoke with a faltering voice—­“it began a good while ago, some months after Mr. Chichester came as a curate to St. Joseph’s.  I was then a very different man from the man you see now.  Often I feel really as if I were not the same man, as if I were radically changed.  It may be health.  I sometimes try to think so.  And then I—­” He broke off.

The strange weakness that Malling had already noticed seemed again to be stealing over him, like a mist, concealing, attenuating.