He made a sidling movement toward the door.  Perhaps it was that movement which finally decided the curate to speak.

“Professor,” he said, “I don’t want you to go yet.”

“Why not?” jerked out Stepton, with one hand on the door-knob.

“You collect ‘cases.’  I have a case for you.  You are a skeptic:  you say men should be brought to faith by facts.  Sit down.  I will give you some facts.”

The professor came slowly back, looking dry and cold, and sat down by the table, facing the Rossetti Madonna.

“Always ready for facts,” he said.

XI

“You have heard of doubles, of course, Professor?” said Chichester, leaning his arms on the table and putting his hands one against the other, as if making a physical effort to be very calm.

“Of course.  There was an account of one in that sermon of yours.”

“Have you ever seen a double?”

“No; not to my knowledge.”

“I suppose you disbelieve in them?”

“I have no reason to believe in them.  I have not collected enough evidence to convince me that there are such manifestations.”

“You know a double at this moment.”

“Do I, indeed?  And may I ask the manifestation’s name?”

“Marcus Harding.”

“Marcus Harding is a double, you say.  Whose?”

“Mine,” said Chichester in a low voice.

He clasped and unclasped his hands.

“I don’t understand you,” said Stepton, rather disdainfully.

“I will try to make you.”  And Chichester began to speak, at first in a low, level voice.  “That sermon of mine,” he said, “was a sort of shadow of a truth that I wanted to reveal,—­that I dared not fully reveal.  Already I had tried to tell Evelyn Malling something of it.  I had failed.  When the moment came, when Malling was actually before me, I could not speak out.  His mind was trying to track the truth that was in me.  He got, as it were, upon the trail.  Once he even struck into the truth.  Then he went away to Marcus Harding.  I remained in London.  When I knew that those two were together I felt a sort of jealous fear of Malling.  For there was pity in him.  Despite his intense curiosity he had a capacity for pity.  I realized that it might possibly interfere with—­with something that I was doing.  And I recalled Marcus Harding to London.  From that moment I have avoided Malling.  I could never tell him.  But you, hard searcher after truth as you are—­you could never find it in you to drag away another from the contemplation of truth.  Could you?  Could you?”

“Probably not,” said Stepton.  “I usually let folks alone even when they’re glaring at falsehood.  Ha!”

He settled himself in his chair, looking sidewise toward Chichester.

“You, like every one else, have noticed the tremendous change in Marcus Harding,” Chichester went on.  “That change, the whole of that change, is solely owing to me.”