"You don't understand. What I desired in our sittings was to draw into
myself strength, power, will from--him. What have I done? I have drawn
into myself the very man. That night when the shutter slipped back he
looked out from the body of Henry Chichester. His mind worked, his soul
was alive, within the cage of another man. And meanwhile Henry Chichester
lay as if submerged, but presently stirred, and, however feebly, lived
again. He lives now. But not from him comes my frightful comprehension of
Marcus Harding. Not him does Marcus Harding fear. Not to him does she,
the woman, look with the eyes of a slave. It is not he who dominates the
crowds in St. Joseph's. It is not he who conceived that sermon of the man
and his double. It is not he who has sometimes been terribly afraid."
"Afraid! Afraid!"
"There have been moments when I have been moved to snatch my double out
of the sight of men. That day when we met Evelyn Malling I feared as I
left them alone together; and when I found Malling intimately there in
that house, I felt like one coming upon an ambush which might be
destructive of his safety. My instinct was to detach Malling from my
double, to attach him to myself. My conduct startled him. I saw that
plainly. Yet I tried to win him over, as it were, to my side. He came to
me. I strove to tell him, but something secret prevented me. And
how could he assist me?"
Chichester got up from the table. The professor saw a darkness moving as
he went to stand by the empty fireplace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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