And a different woman was beginning to appear—­a woman who might be as critical as she had formerly been admiring, a woman capable of becoming embittered.

On the Sunday of Malling’s visit to Onslow Gardens, Mr. Harding’s failure in the pulpit had waked up in his wife eager sympathy and eager spite, the one directed toward the man who had failed, the other toward the man who, as Malling felt sure, had caused the failure.

In Burlington House that woman, whom men with every reason adore, had given place to another less favorable toward him who had been her hero.

It seemed to Malling as if in the future a strange thing might happen, almost as if it must happen:  it seemed to him as if Chichester might convey his view of his rector to his rector’s wife.

“Study the link,” Stepton had said.  “There will be development in the link.”

Already the words had proved true.  There had been a development in Lady Sophia such as Malling had certainly not anticipated.  Where would it end?  Again and again, as he listened to the morning and evening sermons, Malling had asked himself that question; again and again he had recalled his conversation at Burlington House with Lady Sophia.

In the morning at St. Joseph’s Mr. Harding had preached to a church that was half filled; in the evening Henry Chichester had preached to a church that was full to the doors.  And each of the clergymen in turn had listened to the other, but how differently!

Mr. Harding had ascended to the pulpit with failure staring him in the face, and whereas on the Sunday when Malling first heard him he had obviously fought against the malign influence which eventually had prevailed over him, this time he had not had the vigor to make a struggle.  Certainly he had not broken down.  It might be said of him, as it was once said of a nation, that he had “muddled through.”  He had preached a very poor sermon in a very poor way, nervously, indeed, almost timidly, and with the manner of a man who was cowed and hopeless.  The powerful optimism for which he had once been distinguished had given way to an almost unhealthy pessimism, alien surely to the minds of all believers, of all who profess to look forward to that life of which, as Tolstoi long ago said, our present life is but a dream.  Even when he was uttering truths he spoke them as if he had an uneasy suspicion that they were lies.  At moments he seemed to be almost pleading with his hearers to tolerate him, to “bear with him.”  Indeed, several times during his disjointed remarks he made use of the latter expression, promising that his discourse should be a short one.  Very carefully he included himself among those aware of sin, very humbly he declared the unworthiness of any man to set himself up as a teacher and leader of others.

Now, humility is all very well, but if carried to excess, it suggests something less than a man.  Mr. Harding almost cringed before his congregation.  Malling did not feel that his humility was a pretense.  On the contrary, it struck him as abominably real, but so excessive as to be not natural in any thorough man in a normal condition of mind and of body.  It was the sort of humility that creates in the unregenerate a desire to offer a good kicking as a corrective.