“Must the truth always be sugar-coated? It’s an impression.”
“You speak out of an experience?”
“More or less.” Frankly.
Josephine Stone plunged boldly. “Then, for instance,” she suggested, “the man they call Acey Smith might have been whom?”
“Quite another personality by quite another name.”
“You believe there is something in a name?”
“I do and I do not, Miss Cross-examiner,” he answered enigmatically. “Napoleon might have been born Dick Jones, but in such a case the world would have found another name to call him by.”
She laughed over the allusion. “But you are drifting away from the subject, Mr. Witness,” she reminded. “I asked you about Acey Smith’s Man That Might Have Been.”
“He was a dreamer of high-minded dreams and a scholar; the man Fate shaped and willed should survive was merely him they call Acey Smith the timber pirate.”
“But this Man That Might Have Been.” There was deep concern in her tones. “You could have made him, and you could yet—by the sheer force of your will—make him a reality.”