“This was the beginning—­” the rector turned a little toward Malling, and spoke in a voice that was almost terrible in its sadness—­“this was the beginning of what you have been witness of, my unspeakable decline.  This was the definite beginning of my horrible subjection to Henry Chichester.”

He stopped abruptly.  After waiting for a minute or two, expecting him to continue, Malling said: 

“You said that you found yourself obliged to comply with Chichester’s will.  Can you explain the nature of that obligation?”

“I cannot.  I strove to resist.  We argued the matter.  He took his stand upon the moral ground that I was benefiting him enormously through our sittings.  As I had suggested having them ostensibly for that very purpose, you will see my difficulty.”

“Certainly.”

“My yielding seemed perfectly natural, perhaps almost inevitable.  The point is that, without drastic change in me, it was quite unnatural.  My will was unaccustomed to brook any resistance, and troubled itself not at all with argument.  Till then what I wished to do I did, and there was an end.  I now for the first time found myself obliged to accept a moral bondage imposed upon me by my curate.  The term may sound exaggerated; I can only say that was how the matter presented itself to me.  From the moment I did so, I took second place to him.

“We continued to sit from time to time.  And the strange, to me inexplicable, situation rapidly developed.

“To put it before you in few words and plainly:  Chichester seemed to suck my will away from me gradually but surely, till my former strength was his.  But that was not all.  With the growth of his will there was another and more terrible growth:  there rose in him a curiously observant faculty.”

Again the rector took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“A curiously critical faculty.  How shall I say?  Perhaps you may know, Mr. Malling, how the persistent attitude of one mind may influence another.  For instance, if a man always expects ill of another—­treachery, let us say, bad temper, hatred, fear, inducing trickery, perhaps, that other is turned toward just such evil manifestations in connection with that man.  If some one with psychic force thinks all you do is wrong, soon you begin to do things wrongly.  A fearful uneasiness is bred.  The faculties begin to fail.  The formerly sure-footed stumbles.  The formerly self-confident takes on nervousness, presently fear.

“So it came about between Chichester and me.  I felt that his mind was beginning to watch me critically, and I became anxious about this criticism.  Like some subtle acid it seemed to act destructively upon the metal, once so hard and resistant, of my self-confidence, of my belief in myself.  Often I felt as if an eye were upon me, seeing too much, far too much, coldly, inexorably, persistently.  This critical observation became hateful to me.  I suffered under it.  I suffered terribly.  Mr. Malling, if I am to tell you all,—­and I feel that unless I do no help can come to me,—­I must tell you that I have not been in my life all that a clergyman should be.  There have been occasions, and even since my marriage, when I have yielded to impulses that have prompted me to act very wrongly.