"Next week. In nine days from now."
"Go to Paris to-morrow then, you say you have never had any consciousness that this—this thing pursued you beyond your own front door!"
"Never—hitherto."
"Go to-morrow morning. Stay away till after your lecture. And then let us see if the affair is at an end. Hope, my dear friend, hope."
He had stood up. Now he clasped the Professor's hand.
"See all your friends in Paris. Seek distractions. I would ask you also to seek—other help."
He said the last words with a gentle, earnest gravity and simplicity that touched Guildea, who returned his handclasp almost warmly.
"I'll go," he said. "I'll catch the ten o'clock train, and to-night I'll sleep at an hotel, at the Grosvenor—that's close to the station. It will be more convenient for the train."
As Father Murchison went home that night he kept thinking of that sentence: "It will be more convenient for the train." The weakness in Guildea that had prompted its utterance appalled him.