"I do. I want nothing else. Possibly Mr. Harding had none to give me. I don't blame him."
"Perhaps it is a greater thing to give men faith than to give them facts."
"Give them the first by giving them the second, if you can! And that, by the way, is the last thing the average clergyman is able to do."
Chichester sat silent for nearly a minute looking at the professor with a strange expression, almost fiery, yet meditative, as if he were trying to appraise him, were weighing him in a balance.
"Professor," he said at last, "I suppose your passion for facts has led men to put a great deal of faith in you. Hasn't it?"
"I dare say my word carries some weight. I really don't know," responded
Stepton, with an odd hint of something like modesty.
"I had thought of Malling first," almost murmured Chichester.
"What's that about Malling?"
"I think he would have accepted what I have to give more readily than you would. There seems to me something in him which stretches out arms toward those things in which mystics believe. In you there seems to me something which would almost rather repel such things."
"I beg your pardon. I am quiescent. I neither seek to summon nor to repel."