When Malling opened the door of the drawing-room Chichester was standing by one of the windows, looking out into Onslow Gardens.  He turned round, saw Malling, and uttered an exclamation.

“You are here!”

His light tenor voice sounded almost denunciatory, as if he had a right to demand an explanation of Malling’s presence in Mr. Harding’s house, and as he came away quickly from the window, he repeated, with still more emphasis: 

“You are here!”

“Lunching yes,” replied Malling, imperturbably.

He looked at Chichester and smiled.

“You have no objection, I hope?”

His words and manner evidently brought the curate to a sense of his own unconventionality.  He held out his hand.

“I beg your pardon.  Your coming in surprised me.  I had no idea” his blue eyes went searchingly over Malling’s calm face “that you could be here.  I thought you and the rector were complete strangers till I introduced you yesterday.”

“So we were.”

Malling sat down comfortably on a sofa.  His action evidently recalled Chichester’s mind to the fact that he was to see the rector.

“Isn’t the rector coming to see me?” he asked.

“Almost directly.  He’s busy for a few minutes.  We were smoking together in his study.”

“You seem to you seem to have made great friends!” said Chichester, with a sort of forced jocularity.

“Great friends!  They’re hardly made in a moment.  I happened to be at church this morning ”

“At church where?” exclaimed the curate.

“At St. Joseph’s.  And Mr. Harding kindly asked me to lunch.”

“You were at church at St. Joseph’s this morning?” said Chichester.

He sat down by Malling and stared into his face.

“Did you did you stay for the sermon?”

“Certainly.  I came for the sermon.  I had never heard Mr. Harding preach.”

“No?  No?  Well, what did you think of it?  What did you think of it?”

The curate spoke nervously, and seemed to Malling to be regarding him with furtive anxiety.

“It was obvious that Mr. Harding wasn’t in good form this morning,” Malling said.  “He explained the matter after lunch.”

“He explained the matter!” said Chichester, with a rising voice, in which there was an almost shrill note of suspicion.

“Yes.  He told me he was often the victim of nervous dyspepsia, and that he had an attack of it while in the pulpit this morning.”

“He told you it was nervous dyspepsia!”

“I have just said so.”

The curate looked down.

“I advised him not to walk all the way home yesterday,” he said gloomily.  “You heard me.”

“You think it was that?”

“He never will take advice from any one.  That’s his one of his great faults.  Whatever he thinks, whatever he says, must be right.  You, as a layman, probably have no idea how a certain type of clergyman loves authority.”

This remark struck Malling as in such singularly bad taste considering where they were, and that one of them was Mr. Harding’s guest, the other his curate that only his secret desire to make obscure things clear prevented him from resenting it.

“It is one of the curses of the Church,” continued Chichester, “this passion for authority, for ruling, for having all men under one’s feet as it were.  If men would only listen, take advice, see themselves as they really are, how much finer, how much greater, they might become!”

“See themselves as others see them!  Eh?” said Malling.  “But do you mean that a rector should depend on his curate’s advice rather than on his own judgment?”

“And why not?” said Chichester.  “Rector curate archbishop what does it matter?  The point is not what rank in the hierarchy a man has, but what, and how, does he see?  A street boy may perceive a truth that a king is blind to.  At that moment the street boy is greater than the king.  Do you deny it?”

“No,” said Malling, amazed at the curate’s excitement, but showing no astonishment.

“But it’s a terrible thing to see too clearly!” continued Chichester, almost as if talking to himself, absorbed.  “A terrible thing!”

He looked up at Malling, and almost solemnly he said: 

“Are you still going on with all those investigations?”

“When I have any spare time, I often spend some of it in that sort of work,” answered Malling, lightly.

It was his way to make light of his research work, and indeed he seldom mentioned it unless he was forced to do so.

“Do you think it is right?” said Chichester, earnestly.

“Right?”

“To strive to push one’s way into hidden regions.”

“If I didn’t think it right I shouldn’t do it,” retorted Malling, but without heat.

“And for clergymen?” questioned Chichester, leaning forward, and dropping his small, thin hands down between his knees.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think it right for clergymen to indulge themselves for it is indulgence in investigations, in attempts to find out more than God has chosen to reveal to us?”

The man of science in Malling felt impatient with the man of faith in Chichester.

“Does it never occur to you that the anima mundi may have hidden certain things from the minds of mortals just in order to provide them with a field to till?” he said, with a hint of sarcasm.  “Wasn’t the fact that the earth revolves round the sun, instead of the sun round the earth, hidden from every living creature till Galileo discovered it?  Do you think Galileo deserved our censure?”

“Saul was punished for consulting the witch of Endor,” returned Chichester.  “And the Roman Catholic Church forbids her children to deal in occult things.”

“You can’t expect a man like me, a disciple of Stepton, to take the Roman Catholic view of such a matter.”

“You are not a clergyman,” said Chichester.

Malling could not help smiling.

“You think the profession carries with it certain obligations,” he said.  “No doubt it does.  But I shall never believe that one of them is to shut your eyes to any fact in the whole scheme of Creation.  Harm can never come from truth.”

“If I could believe that!” Chichester cried out.

“Do you mean to tell me you don’t believe it?”

Chichester looked at Malling for quite a minute without replying.  Then he got up, and said, with a changed voice and manner: 

“If the rector doesn’t come to see me I shall have to go.  Sunday is not a holiday, you know, for us clergymen.”

He drew out his watch and looked at it.

“I shall have to go.  I’m taking the Children’s Service.”

Malling got up too.

“Is it getting late?” he said.  “Perhaps ”

At this moment the door was gently opened and Mr. Harding appeared.

“Oh, Chichester,” he said.  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.  What is it?  Would you like to come to my study?”

“I must be off,” said Malling.  “May I say good-by to Lady Sophia?  Or perhaps she is resting and would rather not be disturbed.”

“I’m sure she would wish to say good-by to you,” said the rector.  “I’ll just ask her.”

He shot a quick glance from one man to the other and went out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.

Directly he was gone the curate said:  “It has been such a pleasure to me to renew my acquaintance with you, Mr. Malling.  Are you going to be long in London?”

“All the season, I think.”

“Then I hope we may meet again soon, very soon.”

He hesitated, put one hand in his pocket, and brought out a card-case.

“I should like to give you my address.”

“And let me give you mine.”

They exchanged cards.

“I expect you’ll be very busy,” said the curate, rather doubtfully.

Then he added, like a man urged on by some strong, almost overpowering desire to do a thing not quite natural to him: 

“But I wish you could spare an evening to come to dine with me.  I live very modestly, of course.  I’m in rooms, in Hornton Street do you know it? near Campden Hill? Number 4a as you’ll see on my card.  I wonder ”

“I shall be delighted to come.”

“When?”

“Whenever you are kind enough to ask me.”

“Could you come on Wednesday week?  It’s so unfortunate, I have such a quantity of parish engagements that is my first evening free.”

“Wednesday week, with pleasure.”

“At half after seven?”

“That will suit me perfectly.”

“And” he looked toward the door “I shall be greatly obliged to you if you won’t mention to the rector the fact that you are coming.  He ”

“My wife’s in the boudoir,” said Mr. Harding, coming into the room at this moment.

He stood by the door.

Malling shook hands with Chichester, and went to say good-by to his hostess.

Mr. Harding shut the drawing-room door.

“This is the way,” he said.  “Well, Mr. Malling?  Well?”

“You mean you want to know ?”

“Your impression of Chichester.”

The rector stopped on the landing.

“Do you find him much changed?”

Malling shrugged his shoulders.

“Possibly a little.  He may have become rather firmer in manner, a trifle more decisive.”

“Firmer!  More decisive, you say!”

“But surely that is only natural, working as he has done, I understand, under a man such as yourself for two years.”

“Such as myself!  Then you think he’s caught something of my manner and way of looking at things?  You think ”

“Really, it’s difficult to say,” interrupted Malling.  “He’s developed, no doubt.  But very few people don’t.  I suppose you’ve trained him.”

“I!” said the rector.  “I train a man like Chichester!”

In his voice there was a bitter irony.

“Is that you, Mr. Malling?” said the voice of Lady Sophia.  “I was lying down with a book.  This is my little room.”

She looked pale, almost haggard, as the sunshine fell upon her through the open window.

Malling took his leave at once and she did not attempt to detain him.

“I hope you’ll come again,” she said, as they shook hands.  “Perhaps on another Sunday morning, to church and lunch.  I’ll let you know.”

She said the last words with a significance which made Malling understand that she did not wish him to come to church at St. Joseph’s again till she gave him the word.

The rector let him out of the house.  Not another word was spoken about Henry Chichester.  As his guest walked away the rector stood, bareheaded, looking after him, then, as Malling turned the corner of the gardens, with a heavy sigh, and the unconscious gesture of a man greatly troubled in mind, he stepped back into his hall and shut the door behind him.