oved the rule.

Who was Evelina Grey? He wondered how Ralph had come to ask the
question. Suppose he had told him that Evelina Grey was the name of a
woman who haunted him, night and day! In her black gown and with her
burned face heavily veiled, she was seldom out of his mental sight.

All through the past twenty-five years, he had continually told himself
that he had forgotten. When the accusing thought presented itself, he
had invariably pushed it aside, and compelled it to give way to
another. In this way, he had acquired an emotional control for which
he, personally, had great admiration, not observing that his admiration
of himself was an emotion, and, at that, less creditable than some
others might have been.

Man walls up a river, and commands it to do his bidding. Outwardly,
the river assents to the arrangement, yielding to it with a readiness
which, in itself, is suspicious, but man, rapt in contemplation of his
own skill, sees little else. By night and by day the river leans
heavily against the dam. Tiny, sharp currents, like fingers, tear
constantly at the structure, working always underneath. Hidden and
undreamed-of eddies burrow beneath the dam; little river animals
undermine it, ever so slightly, with tooth and claw.

At last an imperceptible opening is made. Streams rush down from the
mountain to join the river; even raindrops lend their individually
insignificant aid. All the forces of nature are subtly arrayed against
the obstruction in the river channel. Suddenly, with the thunder of
pent-up waters at last unleashed, the dam breaks, and the structures
placed in the path by complacent and self-satisfied man are swept on to
the sea like so much kindling-wood. The river, at last, has come into
its own,

A feeling, long controlled, must eventually break its bonds. Forbidden
expression, and not spent by expression, it accumulates force. When
the dam breaks, the flood is more destructive than the steady, normal
current ever could have been. Having denied himself remorse, and
having refused to meet the fact of his own cowardice, Anthony Dexter
was now face to face with the inevitable catastrophe.

He told himself that Ralph's coming had begun it, but, in his heart, he
knew that it was that veiled and ghostly figure standing at twilight in
the wrecked garden. He had seen it again on the road, where
hallucination was less likely, if not altogether impossible. Then the
cold and sinuous