"As you didn't find your way to Hornton Street, I thought I would venture." "Very good of you. This is a soft chair." Chichester sat down. It had been evident to Stepton from the moment when his visitor came in that he was in great agony of mind. There was in his face a sort of still and abject misery which Stepton thought exceedingly promising. As he turned round, leaning his sharp elbow on his writing-table, Stepton was considering how to exploit this misery for the furthering of his purpose. "I want you to tell me something," Chichester began. "I want to know why your attention was first attracted to me. I feel sure that you must be able to give a reason. What is it?" "Well, now, I wish I could," returned Stepton. To himself he gave the swift admonition, "Play for hysteria, and see what comes of it." "I wish I could; but it's a mystery to me. But now--let's see." He knitted his heavy brows. "A long while ago I picked a man out, met him in a crowd, at the Crystal Palace, followed him about, couldn't get away from him. That same evening he was killed on the underground. I read of it in the paper, went to see the body, and there was my man." "Do you claim to have some special faculty?" asked Chichester. "Oh, dear, no. Besides, you haven't been killed on the underground--yet." A curious expression that seemed mingled of disappointment and of contempt passed across Chichester's face. Stepton saw it and told himself, "No hysteria." "Possibly the reason may be a more intellectual one," observed the professor. "I hear you have been preaching some very remarkable sermons. I haven't heard them. Still, others who have may have 'suggestioned' me. Three quarters of any man's fame, you know, are due to mere suggestion." "You're not the man to be the prey of that, I fancy--not the easy prey, at any rate." "Then we're left again with no explanation at all, unless, as I believe I hinted once before, you can give us one." Chichester looked down; without raising his eyes he presently said in a constrained voice: "If I were to give you one you might not accept it." "Probably not," said Stepton, briskly. "In my life I've been offered a great many explanations, and I'm bound to say I've accepted remarkably few." Chichester looked up quickly, and with the air of a man nettled. "You'll forgive me, I hope, for saying that you scientific men very often seem to have a great contempt for those who are more mystically minded," he observed. "I've hit the line!" thought Stepton, with a touch of exultation, as he dropped out a negligent, "Forgive you--of course." "I dare say it seems to you extraordinary that any man should be able to be a clergyman, genuinely believing what he professes and what he preaches." "Very few things seem to me extraordinary." "Perhaps because you are skeptical of so much in which others believe." "That may be it. Quite likely."