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.His voice cried aloud: “The candles!” She sprang from her bed and caught at her dressing-gown.She had it on in a moment and had hold of the matches; then she went very quickly, even in the dark, to the dressing-table, and was immediately striking a match and setting it to the candles.She did not quite take in, as she moved her hand from one to the other, what she saw in the oval glass between, and as they caught she blew out the match and whirled swiftly round.She almost fell at what she saw.Between her and the mirror, and all reflected in the mirror, were three men.One was nearer her; the other two, one on each side of him, were closer to the mirror.From the mirror three identical faces looked out, staring.She felt madly that that nearest form was he, her master, whose child she bore; but then the other—things? men? lovers? The sextuple horror, back and front, stood absolutely still.These others were no shadows or ghostly emanations; they had solidity and shape.She stared; her hand clutched at the table; she swayed, crumpled and fell.When she came to herself again he and she were alone.He had said a sentence or two to reassure her.It was (he said) indeed he who remained; the others were images and actual copies of him, magically multiplied, flesh out of flesh, and sent upon his business.The curtains were pulled back; the world was gray with dawn; and as she looked out over the moors she knew that somewhere there, through that dawn, those other beings went.The world was ready for them and they went to the world.He had left her then; and since that night there had been no physical intercourse between them.She—even she—could not have endured it.She believed that the he she knew was he, yet sometimes she wondered.At moments, during the next one-and-twenty years, while she worked for him and did his will, she wondered if it was the original whom she obeyed, or only one of those shapes sustained at a distance by the real man.She put the thought away.She read sometimes during those years of the appearance of a great religious philosopher in China, a great patriot preacher in Russia, and she guessed—not who—there was in them no who—but what they were.The war had for a while hidden them, but now that the war was over they had reappeared, proclaiming everywhere peace and love, and the enthusiasm for them broke all bounds, and became national and more than national; so that the whole world seemed to be at the disposal of that triplicity.A triple energy of clamor and adoration answered it.There were demands that these three teachers should meet, should draft a gospel and a policy, should fully rule the worship they provoked.It had been so with him in America and would have been in England, had he not deliberately remained in seclusion.And she knew that in all the world only she, besides the Clerk who now sat before her in the throned seat, knew that these others were not true men at all, but derivations and automata, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, but without will and without soul.She knew why he had kept himself in seclusion.He knew that, when he chose, that world was his for the taking.Rhetoric and hypnotic spells and healing powers would loose idolatry, but beyond all these was the secret and crafty appeal to every individual who came to him separately—the whisper, one way or another: “You are different; you are not under the law; you are particular.” He played on both nerves; he moved crowds, but also he moved souls.The susurration of those whispers moved even many who would not otherwise easily have adored.She knew it bitterly, for it was so that she herself had been caught; and indeed she had been fortunate, for she had been useful and she was the mother of his child.Would that ease abandonment? She knew it would not.Even when the deed was done for which Betty had been brought into the world, and their daughter dismissed into the spiritual places, she herself would be no nearer him.He was already almost spirit, except that he was not spirit.But soon he would have spirits for companions, and——But before then, though he delayed his full public manifestation till that other work was done, it would have happened.When the communion with that other world was, through Betty, established, he would go (she thought) into middle Europe, or perhaps farther—to Persia or India; and there those other shapes would come, each known to adoring multitudes, and there would be in secret a mystery of reunion, and then all would be in his hand.She turned her eyes from him, she alone conscious of herself and him in all that group, and saw the rest losing their knowledge before him.They were beginning to sway gently to and fro; their faces were losing meaning; their arms and hands were rising slowly towards him.They were much like the insects in that painting, but their faces were more like his own; she knew when she looked at the painting that Jonathan had given him the face she had so often seen in this house, the blank helpless imbecile gaze.It was why she had been so angry.But he had not seen it.She looked at Richard, Jonathan’s friend, and wondered if he too were beginning to sway and change.In fact, if he were not, he was at least already in some danger of it.He had been thinking of love, and what love would mean if he had known someone who would love him perfectly.Lester was not always completely understanding.Something rhythmical in her did not always entirely correspond to him.He moved a little, as if expressing his own rhythm, forward-backward, backward-forward.His eyes opened a little wider, and as he did so they fell on the woman who sat opposite him
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