Then Eve's face, raised in distressed appeal, overshadowed all
scruples. "You have been silent and patient for years," he
said, suddenly. "Can you be patient and silent a little
longer?" He spoke without consideration. He was conscious of
no selfishness beneath his words. In the first exercise of
conscious strength the primitive desire to reduce all elements
to his own sovereignty submerged every other emotion. "I
can't enter into the thing," he said; "like you, I give no
explanations. I can only tell you that on the day we talked
together in this room I was myself--in the full possession of
my reason, the full knowledge of my own capacities. The man
you have known in the last three weeks, the man you have
imagined in the last four years, is a shadow, an unreality--a
weakness in human form. There is a new Chilcote--if you will
only see him."
Ewe was trembling as he ceased; her face was flushed; there
was a strange brightness in her eyes She was moved beyond
herself.
"But the other you--the old you?"
"You must be patient.
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