He went away into the drawing-room, and returned with the railway-guide open in his hand.

“Malling,” he said, using the greater familiarity he had for a moment discarded, “I am about to do a rude thing, but I ask you, I beg of you, to acquit me of any rude intention toward yourself.  I have been looking up the Sunday trains.  I find I can catch a good one at Faversham to-morrow morning.  There is a motor I can hire in the town to get there.  It stands just by the post-office, where the road branches.”  He paused, looking into Malling’s face as if in search of some sign of vexation or irony.  “With a large parish on my hands,” he went on, “I have a great responsibility.  And if Benyon, my second curate, is ill, they will be short-handed.”

“I see.”

“What distresses me greatly—­greatly—­is leaving you, my guest, at such short notice.  I cannot say how I regret it.”

He stopped.  Purposely, to test him, Malling said nothing, but waited with an expressionless face.

“I cannot say.  But how can I do otherwise?  My duty to the parish must come before all things.”

“I see,” said Malling again.

Looking greatly disturbed, Mr. Harding continued: 

“I will ask you to do me a very great favor.  Although I am obliged to go, I hope you will stay, I entreat you to stay till Monday.  The professor is here.  You will not be companionless.  The servants will do everything to make you comfortable.  As to food, wine—­everything is provided for.  Will you stay?  I shall feel more at ease in going if I know my departure has not shortened your visit.”

“It is very good of you,” Malling replied.  “I’ll accept your kind offer.  To tell the truth, I’m in no hurry to leave the Tankerton air.”

“Thank you,” said the rector, almost with fervor.  “Thank you.”

So, the next morning, Mr. Harding went away in the hired motor, and Malling found himself alone in the red doll’s house.

He was not sorry.  The rector’s revelation on the previous night had well repaid him for his journey; then the air of Tankerton really rejoiced him; and he would have speech of the professor.

“I shall lay it before Stepton,” he had said to Mr. Harding the previous night, after they had parted from the professor.

And he had spoken with authority.  Mr. Harding’s confidence, his self-abasement, and his almost despairing appeal, had surely given Malling certain rights.  He intended to use them to the full.  The rector’s abrupt relapse into reserve, his pitiful return to subterfuge, after the receipt of that hypnotizing telegram, had not, in Malling’s view, abrogated those rights.

When the motor disappeared, he strolled across the grass with a towel and had a dip in the brown sea, going in off the long shoal that the Whitstable and Tankerton folk call “the Street.”  Then he set out to find the professor.