trivial fact of sitting at a table with a friend, and placing his hands
upon it with the hands of another man. He himself had sat with an Oxford
friend,--who in later sittings became entranced,--and at the very first
experiment this man had said to him, "It's so strange, now that I am
sitting with you like this I feel filled with hatred toward you." This
hatred, which had come upon this man at every successive sitting, had
always faded away when the sitting was over. But was it certain that the
feelings generated in sittings never persisted after they were broken
up? Was it certain that in every case the waters that had been
mysteriously troubled settled into their former stillness?

Harding and Chichester, for instance! Had the strong man troubled the
waters of the weaker man's soul, and were those waters still agitated?
That was perhaps possible. But Malling thought it was possible also, and
he had suggested this to Professor Stepton, that the weaker man had
infused some of his weakness, his self-doubtings, his readiness to be
affected by the opinion of others, into his dominating companion. Malling
believed it possible that the wills of the two clergymen, in some
mysterious and inexplicable way, had mingled during their sittings, and
that they had never become completely disentangled. If this were so, the
result was a different Harding from the former Harding, and a different
Henry Chichester from the former Henry Chichester.

What puzzled Malling, however, was the fact, if fact it were, that the
difference in each man was not diminishing, but increasing.

Could they be continuing the sittings, if there had ever been sittings?
All was surmise. As the professor had said, he, Malling, was perhaps
deducing a good deal from very little. And yet was he? His instinct told
him he was not. Yet there might no doubt be some ordinary cause for the