"That was true enough—in its way. In its way, it's still true. Evie still loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her. The difference is that the man I was isn't sitting here in front of you."
"One changes with years, of course. I didn't suppose one could change in a few months, like that."
"One changes with experience—above all, with that kind of experience which people generally call—suffering. That's the great Alchemist; and he often transmutes our silver into gold. In my case, Evie was silver; but I've found there's something else that stands for—"
"So that," she interposed, quickly, "you're not sorry that Evie—?"
He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.
"It isn't a case for sorrow," he replied, after a minute's thinking, "as it isn't one for joy. It's one purely for acceptance. When I first knew Evie I was still something of a kid. It was so all the more because the kid element in me had never had full play. I was arrogant, and cock-sure and certain of my ability to manipulate the world to suit myself. That was all Evie saw, and she liked it. In as far as she had it in her to fall in love with anything, she fell in love with it."
He took a turn or two across the room, coming back to his stand on the hearth-rug.
"I've travelled far since then," he continued; "I've had to travel far. Evie hasn't been able to come with me; and that's all there is to the story. It isn't her fault; because when I asked her, I had no intention of taking this particular way."
"It was I who drove you into that," she said, with a hint of remorse.
"Yes—you—and conscience—and whatever else I honor most. I give you the credit first of all, because, if it hadn't been for you, I shouldn't have had the moral energy to assert my true self against the false one. Isn't it curious that, after having made me Herbert Strange, it should be you who turned me into Norrie Ford again? It means that you exercise supreme power over me—a kind of creative power. You can make of me what you care to. It's no wonder that I've come to see——" He paused, in doubt as to how to express himself, while her eyes were fixed on him in troubled questioning. "It's no wonder," he went on again, "that I've come to see everything in a truer light—Evie as well as all the rest of it."