“What I really wished to do, what I meant to do, if possible, was to use Chichester as a medium, and to try through him to communicate with the spirit world.  I had taken it into my head—­no doubt you will say quite unreasonably—­that he must be entirely subject to my will in a sitting, and that if I willed him to be entranced, it was certain that he would become so.  But my own entirely selfish desires I concealed under the cloak of an unselfish wish to give power to him.  I even pretended, as you see, to have a highly moral purpose, though it is true I suggested trying to effect it in an unconventional and very unecclesiastical manner.

“Chichester, though, as I have said, at first startled, of course eventually fell in with my view.  We sat together in his room at Hornton Street.

“Now, Mr. Malling, some of what I have told you may appear to be almost contradictory.  I have spoken of my maladie de grandeur as if it were a reason why I wished to sit with Henry Chichester, and then of my desire to communicate, if possible, with the spirit world as my reason.”

“I noticed that,” observed Malling, “and purposed later to point it out to you.”

“How can I explain exactly?  It is so difficult to unravel the web of motives in a mind.  It was my maladie de grandeur, I think, that made me long to use my worshiper Chichester as a mere tool for the opening of that door which shuts off from us the region the dead have entered.  My mind at that time was filled with a mingled conceit, amounting at moments almost to an intoxication, and a desire for knowledge.  I reveled in my power when preaching, but was haunted by genuine doubts as to truth.  My egoism longed to make an utter slave of Chichester (I nearly always lusted to push my influence to its limit).  But my desire to know made me conceive the pushing of it in a direction, in this instance, which would perhaps gratify a less unworthy desire than that merely of subjugating another.  The two birds and the one stone!  I thought of them.  I loved the idea of making a tool.  I loved also the idea of using the tool when made.  And I pretended I had only Chichester’s moral interest at heart.  I have been punished, terribly punished.

“We sat, as I say, in Hornton Street, secretly, and of course at night.  My wife knew nothing of it.  I made excuses to get away—­parish matters, meetings, work in the East End.  I had no difficulty with her.  She thought my many activities would bring me ever more and more into the public eye, and she encouraged them.  The people in the house where Chichester lodged were simple folk, and were ready to go early to bed, leaving rector and curate discussing their work for the salvation of bodies and souls.

“At first Chichester was reluctant, I know.  I read his thoughts.  He was not sure that it was right to approach such mysteries; but, as usual, I dominated him silently.  And soon he fell completely under the fascination peculiar to sittings.”