“Now, Chichester was a saint.  Hitherto I had neither been troubled by my own grave shortcomings nor by Chichester’s excellence of character.  I had always felt myself set far above him by my superior mental faculties and my greater will power over the crowd, though, alas! not always over my own demon.  I began to writhe now under the thought of Chichester’s crystal purity and of my own besmirched condition of soul.  All self-confidence departed from me; but I endeavored, of course, to conceal this from the world, and especially from Chichester.  With the world for a time no doubt I succeeded.  But with Chichester—­did I ever succeed?  Could I ever succeed with such an one as he had become?  It seemed to me, it seems to me far more terribly now, that nothing I did, or was, escaped him.  He attended mentally, spiritually even, to everything that made up me.  At first I felt this curiously, then anxiously, then often with bitter contempt and indignation, sometimes with a great melancholy, a sort of wide-spreading sadness in which I was involved as in an icy sea.  I can never make you fully understand what I felt, how this mental and spiritual observation of Chichester affected me.  It—­it simply ate me away, Malling!  It simply ate me away!”

The last words came from Mr. Harding’s lips almost in a cry.

“And how long did you continue the sittings?”

Very quietly Malling spoke, and he just touched the rector’s arm.

“For a long while.”

“Had you ceased from them when I first met you?”

“On Westminster Bridge?  No.”

“Have you ceased from them now?”

The rector shifted as if in physical distress.

“Chichester constrains me to them even now,” he replied, like a man bitterly ashamed.  “He constrains me to them.  And is that goodness, righteousness?  I said he was a saint; but now!  Is it saintliness to torture a fellow-creature?”

Malling remembered how he had once, and not long ago, asked himself whether Chichester’s mouth and eyes looked good.

“Have you ever told Chichester what grave distress he is causing you?” said Malling.

“No, never, never!  I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“A great reserve has grown up between us.  I could never try to break through it.”

“You say a great reserve.  But does he never criticize you in words?  Does he never express an adverse opinion upon what you say or do?”

“Scarcely ever—­after it is said or done.  But sometimes—­”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes—­often I think—­he tries to prevent me from saying or doing something.  Often he checks me with a look when I am in the midst of some speech.  It is intolerable.  Why do I bear it?  But I have to bear it.  Sometimes I exert myself against him.  Why, that first day I met you—­you must have noticed it—­he tried to prevent me from walking home with you.”

“I did notice it.”