ll things can work sometimes,
isn't it? Think what a grain of sand can do to a watch! This was one of
the small things." He was still smiling as he touched the scar on his
forehead. "And you, you were the other miracle. And I'm remembering. It
doesn't seem like seven or eight years, but only yesterday, that the
grain of sand got mixed up somewhere in the machinery in my head. And I
guess there was another reason for my going wrong. You'll understand,
when I tell you."

Had he been Conniston it could not have come from him more naturally,
more sincerely. He was living the great lie, and yet to him it was no
longer a lie. He did not hesitate, as shame and conscience might have
made him hesitate. He was fighting that something beautiful might be
raised up out of chaos and despair and be made to exist; he was
fighting for life in place of death, for happiness in place of grief,
for light in place of darkness--fighting to save where others would
destroy. Therefore the great lie was not a lie but a thing without
venom or hurt, an instrument for happiness and for all the things good
and beautiful that went to make happiness. It was his one great weapon.
Without it he would fail, and failure meant desolation. So he spoke
convincingly, for what he said came straight from the heart though it
was born in the shadow of that one master-falsehood. His wonder was
that Mary Josephine believed him so utterly that not for an instant was
there a questioning doubt in her eyes or on her lips.

He told her how much he "remembered," which was no more and no less
than he had learned from the letters and the clippings. The story did
not appeal to him as particularly unusual or dramatic. He had passed
through too many tragic happenings in the last four years to regard it
in that way. It was simply an unfortunate affair beginning in
misfortune, and with its necessary whirlwind of hurt and sorrow. The
one thing of shame he would not keep out of his mind was that he,
Derwent Conniston, must have been a poor type of big brother in those
days of nine or ten years ago, even though little Mary Josephine had
worshiped him. He was well along in his twenties then. The Connistons
of Darlington were his uncle and aunt, and his uncle was a more or less
prominent figure in ship-building interests on the Clyde. With these
people the three--himself, Mary Josephine, and his brother Egbert--had
lived, "farmed out" to a hard-necked, flinty-hearted pair of relativ