espite my earnest affirmations that in the interval my
whole life and character had changed, I was very surely aware that I was
precisely the same man I had always been--the man who washed, and changed
his tie, and brushed his hair in just this same manner every day; who
looked at himself in the glass with that same half-frowning, half-anxious
expression, as if he were uncertain whether to resent or admire the
familiar reflection. I was confronted by the image of the Graham Melhuish
to whom I had become accustomed; the image of the rather well-groomed,
rather successful young man that I had come to regard as the complete
presentation of my individuality.

But now I saw that that image in the glass could never have done the
things that I had done that day. I could not imagine that stereotyped
creature wanting to fight Frank Jervaise, running away from the Hall,
taking the side of a chauffeur in an intrigue with his master's daughter,
falling in love with a woman he had not known for twenty-four hours, and,
culminating wonder, making extraordinary determinations to renounce the
pleasures and comforts of life in order to ... I could not quite define
what, but the substitute was something very strenuous and difficult and
self-sacrificing.

Nevertheless, some one had done all these things, and if it were not that
conventional, self-satisfied impersonation now staring back at me with a
look of perplexed inquiry, where was I to find his outward likeness? Had I
looked a different man when I was talking to Anne in the Farm parlour or
when I had communed with myself in the wood? Or if the real Graham
Melhuish were something better and deeper than this fraudulent reflection
of him, how could he get out, get through, in some way or other achieve a
permanent expression to replace this deceptive mask? Also, which of us was
doing the thinking at that moment? Did we take it turn and turn about?
Five minutes before the old, familiar Melhuish had undoubtedly been
unpacking his bag in his old familiar way, and wondering how he had come
to do all the queer things he unquestionably had been doing in the course
of this amazing weekend. Now, the new Melhuish was uppermost again,
speculating about the validity of his soul--a subject that had certainly
never concerned the other fellow, hitherto.

But it was the other fellow who was in the ascendant when I entered the
farm sitting-room in answer to the summons of a falsetto bell. I was shy.
I