hen you came into the room, three centuries ago,
and you turned and looked, frowning at me in the candle-light; remember
that and look at me now. What is the difference? Does it shock you? Does
it make the whole world seem a trick, a sham? Does it simply sour your
life to think such a thing possible? Oh, the hours I've spent gloating
on Widderstone's miserable mask of skin and bone, as I was saying to
your brother only last night, and never knew until they shuffled me that
the old self too was nothing better than a stifling suffocating mask.'

'But don't you see,' she argued softly, turning her face away a little,
'you were a stranger then (though I certainly didn't mean to frown). And
then a little while after we were, well, just human beings, shoulder
to shoulder, and if friendship does not mean that, I don't know what it
does mean. And now, you are--well, just you: the you, you know, of three
centuries ago! And if you mean to ask me whether at any precise moment
I have been conscious that this you I am now speaking to was not the
you of last night, or of that dark climb up the hill, why, it is simply
frantic to think it could ever be necessary to say over and over again,
No. But if you mean, Have you changed else? All I could answer is, Don't
we all change as we grow to know one another? What were just features,
what just dingily represented one, as it were, is forgotten, or rather
gets remembered. Of course, the first glimpse is the landscape under
lightning as it were. But afterwards isn't it surely like the alphabet
to a child; what was first a queer angular scrawl becomes A, and is
always ever after A, undistinguished, half-forgotten, yet standing at
last for goodness knows what real wonderful things--or for just the dry
bones of soulless words? Is that it?' She stole a sidelong glance into
his brooding face, leaning her head on her hand.

'Yes, yes,' came the rather dissatisfied reply. 'I do agree; perfectly.
But then, you see--I told you I was going to talk of nothing but
myself--what did at first happen to me was something much worse, and, I
suppose, something quite different from that.'

'And yet, didn't you tell us, that of all your friends not one really
denied in their hearts your--what they would call, I suppose--your
IDENTITY; except that poor little offended old lady. And even she, if my
intuition is worth a penny piece, even she when you go soon and talk to
her will own that she did know you, and that