amazing attraction which I exercise
over it ignorantly. I know that. But to a man of my nature that is the
ghastly part of the matter. If it would hate me, I could bear it. If it
would attack me, if it would try to do me some dreadful harm, I should
become a man again. I should be braced to fight against it. But this
gentleness, this abominable solicitude, this brainless worship of an
idiot, persistent, sickly, horribly physical, I cannot endure. What does
it want of me? What would it demand of me? It nestles to me. It leans
against me. I feel its touch, like the touch of a feather, trembling
about my heart, as if it sought to number my pulsations, to find out the
inmost secrets of my impulses and desires. No privacy is left to me." He
sprang up excitedly. "I cannot withdraw," he cried, "I cannot be alone,
untouched, unworshipped, unwatched for even one-half second. Murchison,
I am dying of this, I am dying."

He sank down again in his chair, staring apprehensively on all sides,
with the passion of some blind man, deluded in the belief that by his
furious and continued effort he will attain sight. The Father knew well
that he sought to pierce the veil of the invisible, and have knowledge
of the thing that loved him.

"Guildea," the Father said, with insistent earnestness, "try to endure
this--do more--try to give this thing what it seeks."

"But it seeks my love."

"Learn to give it your love and it may go, having received what it came
for."

"T'sh! You talk as a priest. Suffer your persecutors. Do good to them
that despitefully use you. You talk as a priest."

"As a friend I spoke naturally, indeed, right out of my heart. The idea
suddenly came to me that all this,--truth or seeming, it doesn't matter
which,--may be some strange form of lesson. I have had lessons--painful
ones. I shall have many more. If you could welcome----"

"I can't! I can't!" Guildea cried fiercely. "Hatred! I can give it
that,--always that, nothing but that--hatred, hatred."

He raised his voice, glared into the emptiness of the room, and
repeated, "Hatred!"

As he spoke the waxen pallor of his cheeks increased, until he looked
like a corpse with living eyes. The Father feared that he was going to
collapse and faint, but suddenly he raised himself upon his chair and
said, in a high and keen voice, full of suppressed excitement:

"Murchison, Murchison!"

"Yes. What is it?"

An amazing ecstasy shone in Guildea's eyes.

"It wants to