“Then I resisted him, and he had to yield.  But even when he yields in some slight matter it makes no difference in our relations.  He is always there, at the window, watching me.”

“What do you say?”

Malling’s exclamation was sharp.

“That sermon of his!” said the rector.  “That fearful sermon!  Ever since I heard it I have felt as if I were the double within that house, as if Chichester were the man regarding my life in hiding.  Why you—­you yourself put my feeling into words!  You suggested to Chichester and my wife that if the man had stayed, had spied upon him who was within the room, the hypocrite—­”

He broke off.  He got up from his seat.

“Let us walk,” he said.  “I cannot sit here.  The air—­the lights—­let us—­”

Almost as if blindly he went forth from the shelter, followed by Malling.

“It’s better here,” he said.  “Better here!  Mr. Malling, forgive me, but just then a hideous knowledge seemed really to catch me by the throat.  Chichester is turning my wife against me.  There is a terrible change in her.  She is beginning to observe me through Chichester’s eyes.  Till quite recently she worshiped me.  She noticed the alteration in me, of course,—­every one did,—­but she hated Chichester for his attitude toward me.  Till quite lately she hated him.  Now she no longer hates him; for she begins to think he is right.  At first I think she believed the excuse I put forward for my strange transformation.”

“Do you mean your nervous affection?”

“Yes.”

“Just tell me, have you any trouble of that kind, or did you merely invent it as an excuse for any failure you made from time to time?”

“I used it insincerely as an excuse.  But I really do suffer from time to time physically.  But physical suffering is nothing.  Why should we waste a thought on such nonsense?”

“In such a strange case as this I believe everything should be taken carefully into consideration,” observed Malling in his most prosaic voice.

The rector’s attention seemed to be suddenly fixed and powerfully concentrated.  The feverish excitement he had been displaying gave place to a calmer, more natural mood.

“Tell me,” he said, “do you think your knowledge can help me?  I am aware that you have made many strange investigations.  Is there anything to be done for me, anything that will restore me to my former powers?  Will you credit me when I declare to you that it was only by making a terrible effort that I was able to get away from Chichester’s companionship and to come down here?  If I had not said that I meant to do so while you were in the room, I doubt if I should ever have had the courage.  There is something inexplicable that seems to bind me to Chichester.  Sometimes there have been moments when I have thought that he longed to be far away from me.  And it has seemed to me that he, too, would find escape difficult, if not impossible.”