ght of Malling first," almost murmured Chichester.

"What's that about Malling?"

"I think he would have accepted what I have to give more readily than you
would. There seems to me something in him which stretches out arms toward
those things in which mystics believe. In you there seems to me something
which would almost rather repel such things."

"I beg your pardon. I am quiescent. I neither seek to summon nor to
repel."

"I couldn't tell Malling," said Chichester. "His readiness stopped me. It
struck me like a blow."

"Malling prides himself on being severely neutral in mind."

"And you on being skeptical?"

"I await facts."

"Shall I give you some strange facts, the strangest perhaps you have ever
met with?"

Stepton smiled dryly.

"You'll forgive me, but some such remark has been the prelude to so many
figments."

"Figments?"

"Of the imagination."

An expression of anger--almost like a noble anger it seemed--transformed
Chichester's face. It was as a fine wrath which looked down from a
height, and in an instant it melted into pity.

"How much you must have missed because of your skepticism!" he said. "But
I shall not let it affect me. You are a man of note-book and pencil. Will
you promise me one thing? Will you give me your word not to share what I
shall tell you with any one, unless, later on, I am willing that you
should?"

"Oh, dear, yes!" said the professor.

And again he smiled. For even now he believed the curate to be wavering,
swayed by conflicting emotions, and felt sure that a flick of the whip
to his egoism would be likely to hasten the coming of what he, the
professor, wanted.

A loud call rose up from the street. A wandering vender of something
was crying his ware. In his voice was a sound of fierce melancholy.
Chichester went to the window and shut it down.

"I wish it was night," he said as he turned.

The professor jerked out his watch.

"It must be getting late," he observed. "Past six! by Jove!"

He made an abrupt movement.

"What?" said Chichester. "You are going!"

He came up to the table.

"Sometimes I think," he said, "that men hate and dread nothing as they
hate and dread facts which may upset the theories they cherish."

"You're perfectly right. Well, very glad to have seen you in your
own room." The professor got up. "By their rooms shall ye know them."
He glanced round.

"Ah, I see you have Rossetti's delightfully anemic Madonna, and Holman
Hunt's 'Li