Did he know enough to be able so to refer to him? Or was it
merely by chance that his words were so strikingly apposite?
"Compensations of what kind?" Sutch asked uneasily.
"The chance of knowing himself for one thing, for the chief thing. He is
brought up short, stopped in his career, perhaps disgraced." Sutch
started a little at the word. "Yes, perhaps--disgraced," Durrance
repeated. "Well, the shock of the disgrace is, after all, his
opportunity. Don't you see that? It's his opportunity to know himself at
last. Up to the moment of disgrace his life has all been sham and
illusion; the man he believed himself to be, he never was, and now at
the last he knows it. Once he knows it, he can set about to retrieve his
disgrace. Oh, there are compensations for such a man. You and I know a
case in point."
Sutch no longer doubted that Durrance was deliberately referring to
Harry Feversham. He had some knowledge, though how he had gained it
Sutch could not guess. But the knowledge was not to Sutch's idea quite
accurate, and the inaccuracy did Harry Feversham some injustice. It was
on that account chiefly that Sutch did not affect any ignorance as to
Durrance's allusion.
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