Again Chichester paused.  In speaking he had evidently become gradually less aware of his companion’s presence and personality.  His subject had gripped him.  Memory had grown warm within him.  He lived in the days that were past.

“That accursed idea,” he repeated slowly, “to use me as his tool in an endeavor to break down the barrier which divides men from the other world.

“As I told you, we began to sit secretly.  Marcus Harding wished me to fall into the entranced condition.  I did not know this at first, so at first I did not consciously resist his desire.  He had told me a lie.  He had told me that he desired only one thing in our sittings, to give to me something of the will power that made him a force in the world.  He had declared that this was possible.  I believed him unquestioningly.  I thought he was trying to send some of his power into me.  Soon I felt that he was succeeding in this supposed endeavor.  Soon I felt that a strange new power was filtering into me.”

Chichester fixed his eyes on Stepton as he said the last words, and seemed to emerge from his former condition of self-absorption.

“You have sat often.  Have you ever felt such a sensation?  It is like growth,” he said.

“When one first begins to sit at seances, one is apt to imagine all sorts of things in the darkness,” returned Stepton.  “I dare say I did, like other folk.”

“I understand,” said Chichester, with a sort of strange condescension.  “You think I was merely the victim of absurdity.  The sense of this coming of power grew slowly, but steadily, within me.  And presently it was complicated by another development, which involved—­or began to involve, let me say at this point—­my companion, Marcus Harding.  I think I ought to tell you that in beginning the sittings I had had certain doubts, which were swept away by my admiration of, and faith in, my rector.  Hitherto I had always thought that our human knowledge was deliberately limited by God, and that it was very wrong to strive to know too much.  The man of science no doubt believes that it is impossible to know too much; but I have thought that many great truths are kept from us because we are not yet in a condition properly to understand them.  I had, therefore, begun these practices with a certain tremor, and possibly a certain feeling of resistance, in the depths of my soul.  As I felt the power coming to me I had put away my fears.  They did not return.  Yet surely the new development within me, of which I now became aware, was connected with those fears, however subtly.  It was a sensation almost of hostility directed against Marcus Harding.”

“Ah, now!” ejaculated the professor, as if in despite of himself.  “And where’s the connection you speak of?”

“Marcus Harding had constrained me to do a thing that in my soul I had believed to be wrong and that had roused my fear.  As power dawned in me, directing itself upon everything about me, it was instinctively hostile to him who had dominated me before I had any power, and who, by dominating me, had for a moment made me afraid.”