“Ah!” Carrick saw that his head fell, and ceased his labors.  He stood, gaunt and perplexed, contemplating the body from which he had expelled the will, the life—­the soul.  It was a plump body, well clad, well fed, a carcase that had absorbed much of its world.  It cost labor and the pains of innumerable toilers to clothe it, nourish it, maintain it, guard, comfort, and embellish it.  And an effort of ten minutes was enough to drain it of all save the fleshly, the mere bestial.  The habit of his mind impelled him to sneer as he stood above it, to moralise in the tune of cynicism.  “Ecce homo!” were the words he chanced upon; but the flavor of them troubled him when he remembered the goal of the journey upon which that absent spirit had departed.

“Oh, Lord!” said Carrick, in a kind of whispering panic.

He cast scared looks to and fro, as though he feared the great room should contain a spy upon him.  It was empty save for him and that witless body.  He put his hands together with the gesture of a child and shut his eyes tight.

“Our Father,” he began, “Which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name!”

The place was as still as a church.  He recited his prayer aloud, in a quiet, careful voice that echoed faintly among the book-shelves.

He bad got as far as “Thine is the kingdom, the power”—­no farther—­ when Mr. Newman stirred, and he gabbled the words to an end hastily before he opened his eyes.  Mr. Newman came back to consciousness with a rush; his body inflated with life, his still face woke, and his vacant eyes, meeting Carrick’s and recognising him, suddenly lit with sense—­and terror.

“I say!” exclaimed Carrick; “will you have some water?”

His hand groped for the glass on the mantelshelf, but he continued to look at Mr. Newman, and presently he forgot the glass.  Terror was the word, the terror of a man who finds—­unawaited, ambushed in his being—­depths and capacities unguessed and appalling.  A blank, horror-ridden face fronted his own, till Mr. Newman put his hands before his face and shuddered.  “What is it?” cried Carrick.  “Old chap, what’s up?”

“My God!”

It was not an expletive, but a prayer, a supplication.  Mr. Newman dashed the hands from his face and sprang up.  Carrick caught him by the arm.

“I say,” he cried.  “It’s rot.  It’s a fake—­it must be!  Whatever happened—­it’s not a sure thing.  Pull yourself together, Newman.  I—­I may be wrong; perhaps it’s all an induced—­you know, an illusion.  I say, look here——­”

“No!”

Gently, but with decision, Mr. Newman put his friendly hand away.  “It’s not an illusion,” he said.

He walked away.  Carrick stood staring after him, a battlefield of compunctions and a growing curiosity.  Mr. Newman was wrestling with his trouble in the shadows; minutes passed before he came again into the lamplight.  His face was blenched, but something like a stricken purpose dwelt on it.