On the night following the dinner in Hornton Street, Malling went to the Covent Garden Opera House to hear “La Traviata.”  The well-worn work did not grasp the attention of a man who was genuinely fond of the music of Richard Strauss, with its almost miraculous intricacies, and who was willingly captive to Debussy.  He looked about the house from his stall, and very soon caught sight of Lady Mansford, Lady Sophia’s sister-in-law, in a box on the Grand Tier.  Malling knew Lady Mansford.  He resolved to pay her a visit, and as soon as the curtain was down, and Tetrazzini had tripped before it, smiling not unlike a good-natured child, he made his way upstairs, and asked the attendant to tap at a door on which was printed, “The Earl of Mansford.”  The man did so, and opened the door, showing a domestic scene highly creditable to the much maligned British aristocracy Lord Mansford seated alone with his wife, in evidently amicable conversation.

After a few polite words he made Malling sit down beside her, and, saying he would have a cigarette in the foyer, he left them together.

Lady Mansford was a pretty, dark woman, of the slightly irresponsible and little-bird type.  She willingly turned her charmingly dressed head and chirped when noticed, and she was generally noticed because of her beauty.  Now she chirped of Ceylon, where Malling had been, and then, more vivaciously, of Parisian milliners, where she had been.  From these allied subjects Malling led her on to a slightly different topic religion.

“I went to St. Joseph’s last Sunday week,” he presently said.

“St. who what?” said Lady Mansford, who was busy with her opera-glasses, and had just noticed that Lady Sindon, a bird-like rival of hers, had changed the color of her hair, fortunately to her Lady Sindon’s disadvantage.

“To St. Joseph’s, to hear your brother-in-law preach.”

“It doesn’t do at all,” murmured Lady Mansford.  “It makes her look Chinese.”

“You said ?”

“Mollie Sindon.  But what were you talking about?  Do tell me.”  She laid down her glasses.

“I was saying that I went to church last Sunday week.”

“Why?”

“To hear your brother-in-law preach at St. Joseph’s.”

“Marcus!” exclaimed Lady Mansford.

She pursed her lips.

“I don’t go to St. Joseph’s.  Poor Sophy!  I’m sorry for her.”

“I lunched with Lady Sophia after the service.”

“Did you?  Isn’t it sad?”

“Sad!  I don’t quite understand?” said Malling, interrogatively.

“The change in him.  Of course people say it’s drink.  Such nonsense!  But they must say something, mustn’t they?”

“Is Mr. Harding so very much changed?”

“Do you mean to say you didn’t notice it?”

“I never met him till within the last fortnight.”

“He’s transformed simply.  He might have risen to anything, with his energy, his ambition, and his connections.  And now!  But the worst of it is no one can make out why it is.  Even Sophia and Isinglass my husband, you know! haven’t an idea.  And it gets worse every day.  Last Sunday I hear his sermon was too awful, a mere muddle of adjectives, such as one hears in Hyde Park, I believe.  I never liked Marcus particularly.  I always thought him too autocratic, too determined to dominate.  He had that poor little Mr. Chichester his curate completely under his thumb.  Mr. Chichester couldn’t call his soul his own.  He worshiped Marcus.  But now they say even he is beginning to think that his god is of clay.  What can it be?  Do you think Marcus is losing his mind?”

“Oh, I should hope not,” returned Malling, vaguely.  “Has it been going on long?”

“Oh, for quite a time.  But it all seemed to come on gradually as things do, you know!  Poor Sophy has always adored him, and given way to him in everything.  In her eyes all that he does is right.  She never says a word, I believe, but she must be suffering the tortures of you know!  There’s Winnie Rufford coming in!  How astonishingly young she looks.  Were you at the Huntingham’s ball?  Well ”

Lady Mansford twittered no more about the Harding ménage.  But Malling felt that his visit had not been fruitless.

After the opera he went to a party in Grosvenor Street where again he managed to produce talk of the Hardings.  It seemed that Lady Mansford had not exaggerated very much.  Among those who knew the Hardings a change in the rector of St. Joseph’s had evidently been generally noticed.  Malling took in to supper a Mrs. Armitage, a great friend of Lady Sophia’s, and she made no secret of the fact that Lady Sophia was greatly distressed.

“I thought she would have been here to-night,” Mrs. Armitage said.  “But she isn’t.  I suppose she felt she couldn’t face it.  So many of his congregation are here, or so many who were in his congregation.”

“The church was crammed to the doors last Sunday week when he preached,” observed Malling.

“Was it?  Curiosity, I suppose.  It certainly can’t have been the intellectual merit of the sermon.  I heard it was quite deplorable.  But last Sunday’s, I was told, was worse still.  No continuity at all, and the church not full.  People say the curate, Mr. Chichester, who often preaches in the evening, is making a great effect, completely cutting out his rector.  And he used to be almost unbearably dull.”

“Will you have a quail?”

“Please.  You might give me two.  My doctor says if I sit up late thank you!”

“I’ve never heard Mr. Chichester preach,” said Malling.

“He seems to have come on marvelously, to be quite another man.”

“Quite another man, does he?”

“Yes.  It’s very trying for the Hardings naturally.  If it continues I think there will have to be a change.  I don’t think things can go on as they are.  My friend Sophia won’t be able to stand it.”

“You mean the contrast?”

“Between her husband and Mr. Chichester.  She’s very highly strung and quite worships her husband; though, between you and me, I think rather in the slave spirit.  But some women are like that.  They can’t admire a man unless he beats them.  Not that Mr. Harding ever dreamed of doing such a thing to Sophia, of course.  But his will had to be law in everything.  You know the type of man!  It’s scarcely my idea of what a clergyman should be.  I think a man who professes to direct the souls of others should be more gentle and unselfish, especially to his wife.  Another quail?  Well, really, I think perhaps I will.  They are so absurdly small this season, aren’t they?  There’s scarcely anything on them.”

So that minute fraction of the world that knew of the existence of the Hardings began to utter itself concerning them, and Malling was fortified in his original belief which he had expressed to Professor Stepton.

Among his many experiments made in connection with psychical research those which had interested him the most had been those in which the mystery of the human will had seemed to be deeply involved.  Malling was essentially a psychologist.  And man was to him the great mystery, because man contained surely something that belonged to, that was lent to, man, as it were, by another, the mind beyond, the anima mundi.  When Malling drew mentally, or spiritually, very near to any man, however rude, however humble, he always had the feeling that he was approaching holy ground.  Hidden beneath his generally imperturbable exterior, sunk beneath the surface incredulity of his mind, there was the deep sense of mighty truths waiting the appointed day of proclamation.  Surely, he often thought, if there is God in anything, in the last rays of the sunset, in the silence of night upon the sea, in the waking of spring among the forests and the gardens, in the song of the nightingale which knows not lovers are listening, there is God in the will of man.

And when he made investigations into the action of will upon will, or of will as it seemed upon matter, he was held, as he was not held by the appearance of so-called spirit faces and spirit forms, even when he could not connect these with trickery which he knew how to expose.  Perhaps, however, his incredulity in regard to these latter phenomena was incurable, though he did not know it.  For he knew nearly all the devices of the charlatans.  And when the so-called spirits came, the medium was always entranced, that is, apparently will-less, and so to Malling not interesting.

Now, from what Harding and Chichester had said to him, and from what he had observed for himself, Malling believed that the two clergymen must have had sittings together, probably with the usual tremendous object of the ignorant amateur, that merely of communicating with the other world.  Considering who the two men were, Malling believed that in all probability they had sat alone and in secret.  He also felt little doubt that from Mr. Harding’s brain had come the suggestion of these practices, that his will had led Chichester on to them.  Although he had not known the rector two years ago, he had gathered sufficient testimony to the fact that he had been a man of powerful, even perhaps of tyrannical, temperament, formed rather to rule than to be ruled.  He knew that Chichester, on the contrary, had been gentle, kindly, yielding, and of somewhat weak, though of very amiable, nature.  The physique of the two men accorded with these former temperaments.  Harding’s commanding height, large frame, big, powerful face and head, rather hard gray eyes, even his large white teeth, his bony, determined hands, his firmly treading feet, suggested force, a dominating will, the capacity, and the intention, to rule.  Henry Chichester’s fleshly envelop, on the other hand, cherubic, fair, and delicate, his blue eyes, small bones, the shape of forehead and chin, the line of the lips, hinted at surely more than that, surely stated mildly the existence within it of a nature retiring, meek, and ready to be ruled by others.  No wonder if Chichester had been, as Lady Mansford had said, completely under the rector’s thumb, no wonder if he had been unable to “call his soul his own” and had “worshiped Marcus.”

Yes, if there had been these secret sittings by these two men, it was Harding who had persuaded Chichester to take part in them.  And what had these sittings led to, what had been their result?

The ignorant outsider, the hastily skeptical, of course would say that there could have been no result.  Malling, knowing more, knew better.  He had seen strange cases of temporary confusion of a man’s will brought about by sittings, of what had seemed temporary change even of a man’s nature.  When a hitherto sane man goes mad he often becomes the opposite of what he was.  Those whom he formerly loved he specially singles out for hatred.  That which he delighted to do he shrinks from with horror.  Once good-natured, he is now of an evil temper, once gentle, he is fiercely obstinate, once gay, he cowers and weeps.  So Malling had known a man, while retaining his sanity, to be transformed by the apparently trivial fact of sitting at a table with a friend, and placing his hands upon it with the hands of another man.  He himself had sat with an Oxford friend, who in later sittings became entranced, and at the very first experiment this man had said to him, “It’s so strange, now that I am sitting with you like this I feel filled with hatred toward you.”  This hatred, which had come upon this man at every successive sitting, had always faded away when the sitting was over.  But was it certain that the feelings generated in sittings never persisted after they were broken up?  Was it certain that in every case the waters that had been mysteriously troubled settled into their former stillness?

Harding and Chichester, for instance!  Had the strong man troubled the waters of the weaker man’s soul, and were those waters still agitated?  That was perhaps possible.  But Malling thought it was possible also, and he had suggested this to Professor Stepton, that the weaker man had infused some of his weakness, his self-doubtings, his readiness to be affected by the opinion of others, into his dominating companion.  Malling believed it possible that the wills of the two clergymen, in some mysterious and inexplicable way, had mingled during their sittings, and that they had never become completely disentangled.  If this were so, the result was a different Harding from the former Harding, and a different Henry Chichester from the former Henry Chichester.

What puzzled Malling, however, was the fact, if fact it were, that the difference in each man was not diminishing, but increasing.

Could they be continuing the sittings, if there had ever been sittings?  All was surmise.  As the professor had said, he, Malling, was perhaps deducing a good deal from very little.  And yet was he?  His instinct told him he was not.  Yet there might no doubt be some ordinary cause for the change in Mr. Harding.  Some vice, such as love of drink, or morphia, something that disintegrates a man, might have laid its claw upon him.  That was possible.  What seemed to Malling much more unaccountable was the extraordinary change in the direction of strength in Chichester.  And the relations between the two men, if indeed the curate had once worshiped his rector, were mysteriously transformed.  For now, was it not almost as if something of Harding in Chichester watched, criticized, Chichester in Harding?

But now to study Lady Sophia!  For if there was really anything in Malling’s curious supposition, the woman must certainly be strangely affected.  He remembered the expression in her eyes when her husband was preaching, her manner when she spoke of the curate as one of her husband’s swans.

And he longed to see her again.  She had said that she hoped he would come again to St. Joseph’s and to her house, but he knew well that any such desire in her had arisen from her wounded pride in her husband.  She wished Malling to know what the rector could really do.  When she thought that the rector had recovered his former powers, his hold upon the minds of men, then she would invite Malling to return to St. Joseph’s, but not before.

And when would that moment come?

It might not come for weeks, for months.  It might never come.  Malling did not mean to await it.  Nevertheless he did not want to do anything likely to surprise Lady Sophia, to lead her to think that he had any special object in view in furthering his acquaintance with her.

While he was casting about in his mind what course to take, chance favored him.

Four days later, when he was strolling round the rooms in Burlington House, he saw not far in front of him the tall and restless figure of a woman.  She was alone.  For some time Malling did not recognize her.  She did not turn sufficiently for him to see her face, and her almost feverish movements, though they attracted and fixed his attention, did not strike him as familiar.  His thought of her, as he slowly followed in the direction she was taking, was, “What a difficult woman that would be to live with!” For the hands were never still; the gait was uneasy; nervousness, almost a sort of pitiful irritation, seemed expressed by her every movement.

In the big room this woman paused before the picture of the year, which happened to be a very bad one, and Malling, coming up, at last recognized her as Lady Sophia Harding.

He took off his hat.  She seemed startled, but greeted him pleasantly, and entered into a discussion of the demerits which fascinate the crowd.

“You prefer seeing pictures alone, perhaps?” said Malling, presently.

“Indeed I don’t,” she answered.  “I was coming to-day with my husband.  We drove up together.  But at the last moment he thought he remembered something, some appointment with Mr. Chichester, and left me.”

There were irony and bitterness in her voice.

“He said he’d come back and meet me in the tea-room presently,” she added.

“Shall we go there and wait for him?” asked Malling.

“But I’m afraid I’m taking up your time.”

“I have no engagements this afternoon.  I shall enjoy a quiet talk with you.”

“It’s very good of you.”

They descended, and sat down in a quiet corner.  In the distance a few respectable persons were slowly eating bath-buns with an air of fashion, their duly marked catalogues laid beside them on marble.

Far-off waiters, standing with their knees bent, conversed in undertones.  A sort of subterranean depression, peculiar to this fastness of Burlington House, brooded over the china and the provisions.

“It reminds me of the British Museum tearoom,” said Lady Sophia.  “Here is tea!  What a mercy!  Modern pictures sap one’s little strength.”

She looked haggard, and was obviously on the edge of her nerves.

“Marcus might have come in,” she added.  “But of course he wouldn’t or couldn’t.”

“Doesn’t he care for pictures?”

She slightly shrugged her shoulders.

“He used to.  But I don’t know that he does now.”

“I suppose he has a tremendous amount to do.”

“He used to do much more at Liverpool.  If a man wishes to come to the front he mustn’t sit in an armchair with folded hands.”

There was a sharp sound of criticism in her voice which astonished Malling.  At the luncheon, only about a fortnight ago, she had shown herself plainly as the adoring wife, anxious for her husband’s success, nervously hostile to any one who interfered with it, who stood between him and the homage of his world.  Now Malling noted, or thought he noted, a change in her mental attitude.  He was instantly on the alert.

“I’m sure that’s the last thing Mr. Harding would do,” he said.

She shot a glance at him out of her discontented dark eyes.

“Are you?” she said.

And sarcasm crept in the words.  She gave to Malling at this moment the impression of a woman so strung up as to be not her natural self, so tormented by some feeling, perhaps long repressed, that her temperament was almost furiously seeking an outlet, knowing instinctively, perhaps, that only there lay its salvation.

“His record proves it,” said Malling, with serenely smiling assurance.

Lady Sophia twisted her lips.  The Academy tea was very strong.  Perhaps it had been standing.  She drank a little, pulled at her long gloves restlessly, and looked at Malling.  He knew she was longing to confide in somebody.  If only he could induce her to confide in him!

“Oh, my husband’s been a very active man,” she said.  “Everybody knows that.  But in this modern world of ours one must not walk, or even run along, one must keep on rushing along if one intends to reach the goal.”

“And by that you mean ?”

“Mean!  The topmost height of your profession, or business, of whatever career you are in.”

“You are ambitious,” he said.

“Not for myself,” she answered quickly.  “I have no ambition for myself.”

“But perhaps the ambition to spur on another successfully?  That seems to me the truest, the most legitimate ambition of the woman all men worship in their hearts.”

Suddenly tears started into her eyes.  She was sitting opposite Malling, the tea-table between them.  Now she leaned forward across it.  By nature she was very sensitive, but she was not a self-conscious, woman.  She was not self-conscious now.

“It is much better to be selfish,” she said earnestly.  “That is where we women make such a fatal mistake.  Instead of trusting to ourselves, of relying on ourselves, and of having a personal ambition, we seek always another in whom we may trust; we are unhappy till we rely on another; it is for another we cherish, we hug, ambition.  And then, when all founders, we realize too late what I dare say every man knows.”

“What is that?”

“That we women are fools fools!”

“For being unselfish?”

“For thinking we have power when we are impotent.”

She made a gesture that was surely one of despair.

“No one at any rate, no woman has power for another,” she added, with almost terrible conviction.  “That is all a legend, made up to please us, I suppose.  We draw a sword against darkness and think we are fighting.  Isn’t it too absurd?”

With the last words she changed her tone, trying to make it light, and she smiled.

“We take everything too seriously.  That’s the trouble!” she said.  “And men pretend we take nothing seriously.”

“Very often they don’t understand.”

“Oh, please say never!” she exclaimed.  “They never understand.”

Suddenly Malling resolved on a very bold stroke.

“But I’m a man,” he said, as if that obvious fact shattered her contention.

“What has that got to do with it?” she said, in obvious surprise.

“Because I do not understand.”

For a moment she was silent.  He thought he read what was passing through her mind, as he knew he had read her character.  She was one of those women who must be proud of their men, who love to be ruled, but only by a conqueror, who delight to sink themselves, but in power, not in impotence.  And now she was confronted by the shipwreck not merely of her hopes, but also of her belief.  She saw a hulk drifting at the mercy of the waves that, perhaps, would soon engulf it.  But she was not only despairing, she was raging too.  For she was a woman with nervous force in her, and it is force that rages in the moments of despair, seeking, perhaps unconsciously, some means of action and finding none.

“Why should there not be some hope?” asked Malling, quietly.

“To-morrow is Sunday.  If you go to morning church at St. Joseph’s, and then to evening church, you will see if there is any hope.”

“To evening church?”

“Yes, yes.”

She got up.

“You are going?”

“I must.  Forgive me!”

She held out her hand.

“But ”

“No, don’t come with me, please.”

“If I go to St. Joseph’s to-morrow, afterward may I see you again?”

“If you think it’s worth while.”

Her face twisted.  Hastily she pulled down her veil, turned away and left him.