Again I bowed.

’A predicament, I fancy, of an altogether unparalleled sort.  I take it that anything I may say to you will be as though it were said to a father confessor.’

‘You may rest assured of that.’

’Good.—­Then, to make the matter clear to you I must begin by telling you a story,—­if I may trespass on your patience to that extent.  I will endeavour not to be more verbose than the occasion requires.’

I offered him a chair, placing it in such a position that the light from the window would have shone full upon his face.  With the calmest possible air, as if unconscious of my design, he carried the chair to the other side of my desk, twisting it right round before he sat on it,—­so that now the light was at his back and on my face.  Crossing his legs, clasping his hands about his knee, he sat in silence for some moments, as if turning something over in his mind.  He glanced round the room.

’I suppose, Mr Champnell, that some singular tales have been told in here.’

’Some very singular tales indeed.  I am never appalled by singularity.  It is my normal atmosphere.’

’And yet I should be disposed to wager that you have never listened to so strange a story as that which I am about to tell you now.  So astonishing, indeed, is the chapter in my life which I am about to open out to you, that I have more than once had to take myself to task, and fit the incidents together with mathematical accuracy in order to assure myself of its perfect truth.’

He paused.  There was about his demeanour that suggestion of reluctance which I not uncommonly discover in individuals who are about to take the skeletons from their cupboards and parade them before my eyes.  His next remark seemed to point to the fact that he perceived what was passing through my thoughts.

’My position is not rendered easier by the circumstance that I am not of a communicative nature.  I am not in sympathy with the spirit of the age which craves for personal advertisement.  I hold that the private life even of a public man should be held inviolate.  I resent, with peculiar bitterness, the attempts of prying eyes to peer into matters which, as it seems to me, concern myself alone.  You must, therefore, bear with me, Mr Champnell, if I seem awkward in disclosing to you certain incidents in my career which I had hoped would continue locked in the secret depository of my own bosom, at any rate till I was carried to the grave.  I am sure you will suffer me to stand excused if I frankly admit that it is only an irresistible chain of incidents which has constrained me to make of you a confidant.’

’My experience tells me, Mr Lessingham, that no one ever does come to me until they are compelled.  In that respect I am regarded as something worse even than a medical man.’