is eyes on Stepton as he said the last words, and
seemed to emerge from his former condition of self-absorption.

"You have sat often. Have you ever felt such a sensation? It is like
growth," he said.

"When one first begins to sit at seances, one is apt to imagine all sorts
of things in the darkness," returned Stepton. "I dare say I did, like
other folk."

"I understand," said Chichester, with a sort of strange condescension.
"You think I was merely the victim of absurdity. The sense of this coming
of power grew slowly, but steadily, within me. And presently it was
complicated by another development, which involved--or began to involve,
let me say at this point--my companion, Marcus Harding. I think I ought
to tell you that in beginning the sittings I had had certain doubts,
which were swept away by my admiration of, and faith in, my rector.
Hitherto I had always thought that our human knowledge was deliberately
limited by God, and that it was very wrong to strive to know too much.
The man of science no doubt believes that it is impossible to know too
much; but I have thought that many great truths are kept from us because
we are not yet in a condition properly to understand them. I had,
therefore, begun these practices with a certain tremor, and possibly a
certain feeling of resistance, in the depths of my soul. As I felt the
power coming to me I had put away my fears. They did not return. Yet
surely the new development within me, of which I now became aware, was
connected with those fears, however subtly. It was a sensation almost of
hostility directed against Marcus Harding."

"Ah, now!" ejaculated the professor, as if in despite of himself. "And
where's the connection you speak of?"

"Marcus Harding had constrained me to do a thing that in my soul I had
believed to be wrong and that had roused my fear. As power dawned in me,
directing itself upon everything about me, it was instinctively hostile
to him who had dominated me before I had any power, and who, by
dominating me, had for a moment made me afraid."

"Retrospective enmity! Very well!" muttered the professor. "I understand
you. Keep on!"

"This hostility--if I may call a feeling at first not very definite by
so definite a name--induced in me a critical attitude of mind. I found
myself, to my surprise, secretly criticizing the man whom till now I had
regarded as altogether beyond the reach of criticism. I felt that Marcus
Harding was giving me power. I