“I say that telepathy does not explain the link between Marcus Harding and myself.”

The professor struck his hand on the table.  It seemed to him that if only he could get into an argument this strange confusion and fear might leave him.  He would be on familiar ground.

“What you call vision might be merely mind-reading, what you call perceiving the action of the spirit, mind-reading.  Your terror lest others should find out bad truths about Marcus Harding would spring naturally enough from your lingering regard for him.  Your acute anxiety when he is preaching arises of course from the fact that, owing to bodily causes, no doubt, his mental powers are failing him, and he is no longer able to do himself justice.”

“You don’t understand.  What I desired in our sittings was to draw into myself strength, power, will from—­him.  What have I done?  I have drawn into myself the very man.  That night when the shutter slipped back he looked out from the body of Henry Chichester.  His mind worked, his soul was alive, within the cage of another man.  And meanwhile Henry Chichester lay as if submerged, but presently stirred, and, however feebly, lived again.  He lives now.  But not from him comes my frightful comprehension of Marcus Harding.  Not him does Marcus Harding fear.  Not to him does she, the woman, look with the eyes of a slave.  It is not he who dominates the crowds in St. Joseph’s.  It is not he who conceived that sermon of the man and his double.  It is not he who has sometimes been terribly afraid.”

“Afraid!  Afraid!”

“There have been moments when I have been moved to snatch my double out of the sight of men.  That day when we met Evelyn Malling I feared as I left them alone together; and when I found Malling intimately there in that house, I felt like one coming upon an ambush which might be destructive of his safety.  My instinct was to detach Malling from my double, to attach him to myself.  My conduct startled him.  I saw that plainly.  Yet I tried to win him over, as it were, to my side.  He came to me.  I strove to tell him, but something secret prevented me.  And how could he assist me?”

Chichester got up from the table.  The professor saw a darkness moving as he went to stand by the empty fireplace.

“I must look on truth,” he continued; “I have to.  The fascination of staring upon the truth of oneself is deadly, but it surpasses all other fascination.  He sins more often now.  I watch him sin.  Sometimes under my contemplation I see him writhing like a thing in a trap—­the semblance of myself.  How the woman despises him now!  Sometimes I feel deeply sad at my own ruthlessness.  It is frightful to contemplate the physical wreck of a being whom, in some strange and hideous way, one always feels to be oneself.  When I look at him it is as if his fallen face, his hanging nerveless hands, his down-drooping figure and eyes lit with despair were mine.  His poses, his gestures, his physical