‘But why didn’t you tell them—when you knew what they thought?’
‘Oh, they are welcome to their thoughts. I’ve never in my life explained any of my actions, and I’m not going to begin now. Do you know——?’ he hesitated.
‘Know what?’
‘Only a strange fancy I used to have at such moments. It was rather queer’—he smiled shyly. ‘I used to feel just as if I had gone back to the life I had always been accustomed to—as if I had just awakened, if you can understand—while the other, my ordinary life, appeared to be a kind of dull dream, a kind of captivity which I should have to return to, but which, nevertheless, was not real.’
Graham watched him a moment in silence. ‘Suppose—suppose your fancy were the truth!’
‘The truth! Oh, nonsense! How could it be?’
‘Suppose you really did, long ago, live a life like that!’
‘Among woods and meadows and streams?’
‘Long ago, long ago——’
Brocklehurst shook his head.