eone who knows my past, or I shall go
mad in my self-imposed solitude. Come back, Miss Strange. You of all
others have the prior right to hear."

VII

"I shall have to begin," said he, when they were all seated and ready to
listen, "by giving you some idea, not so much of the family tradition,
as of the effect of this tradition upon all who bore the name of Van
Broecklyn. This is not the only house, even in America, which contains a
room shut away from intrusion. In England there are many. But there is
this difference between most of them and ours. No bars or locks forcibly
held shut the door we were forbidden to open. The command was enough;
that and the superstitious fear which such a command, attended by a long
and unquestioning obedience, was likely to engender.

"I know no more than you do why some early ancestor laid his ban upon
this room. But from my earliest years I was given to understand that
there was one latch in the house which was never to be lifted; that any
fault would be forgiven sooner than that; that the honour of the whole
family stood in the way of disobedience, and that I was to preserve that
honour to my dying day. You will say that all this is fantastic, and
wonder that sane people in these modern times should subject themselves
to such a ridiculous restriction, especially when no good reason was
alleged, and the very source of the tradition from which it sprung
forgotten. You are right; but if you look long into human nature, you
will see that the bonds which hold the firmest are not material
ones--that an idea will make a man and mould a character--that it lies
at the source of all heroisms and is to be courted or feared as the case
may be.

"For me it possessed a power proportionate to my loneliness. I don't
think there was ever a more lonely child. My father and mother were so
unhappy in each other's companionship that one or other of them was
almost always away. But I saw little of either even when they were at
home. The constraint in their attitude toward each other affected their
conduct toward me. I have asked myself more than once if either of them
had any real affection for me. To my father I spoke of her; to her of
him; and never pleasurably. This I am forced to say, or you cannot
understand my story. Would to God I could tell another tale! Would to
God I had such memories as other men have of a father's clasp, a
mother's kiss--but no! my grief, already profound, might have beco