“Well,” said he, “if you care to know, it was this.  The first time that I attended Mass here, desiring to avoid the people, I sought out a far corner of the church, behind a pillar, where there was no one.  But as soon as I had got myself well established there, up hobbled a deformed and lame old man, and plumped himself down beside me, so close that our coat-sleeves touched.  I think he was the most repulsive-looking old man I have ever seen; he was certainly the dirtiest, the grimiest, and his rags were extravagantly foul.  I will spare you a more circumstantial portrait.  And all through Mass I was sick with disgust and sore with resentment.  Why should he come and rub his coat-sleeve against mine, when there was room in plenty for him elsewhere?  The next time I went to church, I chose a different corner, as remote as might be from my former one; but again, no sooner was I well installed, than, lo and behold, the same unspeakable old man limped up and knelt with me, cheek by jowl.  And so, if you can believe it, the next time, and so the next.  It didn’t matter where I placed myself, there he was sure to place himself too.  You will suppose that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed.  Why should he pursue me so?  Who was he?  What was he after?  And for enlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata.  ’Who is the hideous old man who always kneels beside me?’ I asked her.  She had not noticed any one kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on the contrary, that I always knelt alone, at a distance.  ‘Well,’ said I, ’keep your eyes open to-day, and you will see the man I mean.’  So we went to Mass, and sure enough, no sooner had I found a secluded place, than my old friend appeared and joined me, dirtier and more hideous and if possible more deformed than ever.

“Yes?” said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused.

“When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was,” continued John.  “And she said that though she had kept her eyes open, according to my injunction, she had failed to see any one kneeling beside me—­that, on the contrary, she had seen me,” he concluded, with an insouciance that was plainly assumed for its dramatic value, “kneeling alone, at a distance from every one.”

Maria Dolores’ face was white.  She frowned her mystification.

“What!” she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice.

“That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at the time,” said John.  “Then I gave her a minute description of the old man, in all his ugliness.  And then she administered my lesson to me.”

“Yes?  What was it?” questioned Maria Dolores, her interest acute.

“Speaking in that oracular vein of hers, her eyes very big, her face very grave, she assured me that my horrible old man had no objective existence.  She informed me cheerfully and calmly that he was an image of my own soul, as it appeared, corrupted and aged and deformed by the sins of a lifetime, to God and to the Saints.  And she added that he was sent to punish me for my pride in thinking myself different to the common people, and in seeking to hold myself aloof.  Since then,” John brought his anecdote to a term, “I have always knelt in the body of the church, and I have never again seen my Doppelgaenger.”