Malling spoke strongly to determine, if possible, the rector to speak, to say out all that was in his heart. "Can I tell you?" Mr. Harding almost murmured. "Can I tell you?" "I think you asked me here that you might tell me something." "It is true. I did." "Then--" "Let us sit down in this shelter. There is no one in it. People are going home." Malling followed him into a shelter, with a bench facing the sea. "I thought perhaps here I might be able to tell you," said Mr. Harding. "I am in great trouble, Mr. Malling, in great trouble. But I don't know whether you, or whether any one, can assist me." "If I may advise you, I should say--tell me plainly what your trouble is." "It began--" Mr. Harding spoke with a faltering voice--"it began a good while ago, some months after Mr. Chichester came as a curate to St. Joseph's. I was then a very different man from the man you see now. Often I feel really as if I were not the same man, as if I were radically changed. It may be health. I sometimes try to think so. And then I--" He broke off. The strange weakness that Malling had already noticed seemed again to be stealing over him, like a mist, concealing, attenuating. "Possibly it is a question of health," said Malling, rather sharply. "Tell me how it began." "When Chichester first joined me, I was a man of power and ambition. I was a man who could dominate others, and I loved to dominate." His strength seemed returning while he spoke, as if frankness were to him a restorative of the spirit. "It was indeed my passion. I loved authority. I loved to be in command. I was full of ecclesiastical ambition. Feeling that I had intellectual strength, I intended to rise to the top of the church, to become a bishop eventually, perhaps even something greater. When I was presented to St. Joseph's,--my wife's social influence had something to do with that,--I saw all the gates opening before me. I made a great effect in London. I may say with truth that no clergyman was more successful than I was--at one time. My wife spurred me on. She was immensely ambitious for me. I must tell you that in marrying me she had gone against all her family. They thought me quite unworthy of her notice. But from the first time I met her I meant to marry her. And as I dominated others, I completely dominated her. But she, once married to me, was desperately anxious that I should rise in the world, in order that her choice of me might be justified in the eyes of her people. You can understand the position, I dare say?" "Perfectly," said Malling.