“I’ll tell you,” he said.  Then, wildly, “Oh, man! why did you let me?  This trick of yours—­it’s the knowledge of good and evil; it’s the forbidden fruit.  Why did you let me?”

Carrick stammered futilely; there was no answer possible to give.

“I am a Christian,” went on Mr. Newman, as though he appealed for justification.  “By my lights I serve God.  I try not to judge others.  I’ve not judged you, have I, Carrick?  You—­you don’t go to church, but I make a friend of you, don’t I?”

“Yes,” said Carrick.

“Then—­why—­” cried Mr. Newman—­“why, of all people, should I—­oh, Carrick, I don’t know how to tell you.”

Let Carrick’s answer be remembered when his epitaph is written.

“Then don’t tell me,” he said.  “I don’t want to hear.”

Mr. Newman shook his head.  He had come to a standstill at the side of the big chair.  He looked old and stricken and sad.

“Ah,” he said.  “But listen all the same.”

He remained standing while he told his tale, with eyes that sought Carrick’s listening face and fell away again.

“It took you longer than it usually does,” he said; “to send me on, I mean.  I expect I wasn’t as good a subject as usual, too.  I know I was full of a sort of gladness and expectation, for I didn’t doubt that you could do it.  I had a feeling that I was going to see—­really to see, with mortal eyes—­Him, my Redeemer, the Son of God!  I wasn’t afraid—­only joyful with a great solemnity.  I carried it with me, that joy, into the fog and darkness; it was all that I knew when the utter night surged up and gulfed me, and even life was forgotten.  I was to see Him, like the pure in heart who are to see God.  I had had that wonder in my mind since Sunday evening; the curate preached on it—­and I—­I thought my heart was pure.”

His fearful eyes fluttered to Carrick’s face and sank.

“The light came as it came before,” he went on, quickly and miserably.  “First a sense of something that was not mere darkness, infinitely distant, but swooping down upon me at an unimaginable speed, broadening more quickly than the sense could follow—­and then it was daylight all about me, and I was in the world, seeing, hearing, and—­yes, and speaking, speaking, Carrick.  Oh, my God!”

He shivered and put a hand out to the arm of the big chair.  Carrick said nothing.

“It’s so clear,” said Mr. Newman.  “If it weren’t so clear, I might persuade myself that it was an illusion, a vision—­but it’s not.  It happened.  The first thing I know was that it was very hot.  A sun stood in the sky; its rays beat on me, and they were strong.  I was in a crowd of people, and they—­we, that is—­we all stood facing a building, a white building with a great door.  There were many of us; I was thrust between two big hairy men, and there was a great noise.  Everybody was shouting.  I was shouting too.  I had both my arms raised above my head, with my fists clenched—­like that——­”