The fact that you already
knew made the telling easier--but it altered nothing."
Eve raised her head, but he went resolutely on.
"To-night," he said, "I have seen into my own life, into my
own mind, and my ideas have been very roughly shaken into new
places.
"We never make so colossal a mistake as when we imagine that
we know ourselves. Months ago, when your husband first
proposed this scheme to me, I was, according to my own
conception, a solitary being vastly ill-used by Fate, who,
with a fine stoicism, was leading a clean life. That was what
I believed; but there, at the very outset, I deceived myself.
I was simply a man who shut himself up because he cherished a
grudge against life, and who lived honestly because he had a
constitutional distaste for vice. My first feeling when I saw
your husband was one of self-righteous contempt, and that has
been my attitude all along. I have often marvelled at the flood
of intolerance that has rushed over me at sight of him--the
violent desire that has possessed me to look away from his
weakness and banish the knowledge of it; but now I understand.
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