(So the first fascicle ended. I put it aside and looked for the second.
“Well?” said the man who wrote.
“This is fiction?”
“It’s my story.”
“But you— Amidst this beauty— You are not this ill-conditioned, squalidly bred lad of whom I have been reading?”
He smiled. “There intervenes a certain Change,” he said. “Have I not hinted at that?”
I hesitated upon a question, then saw the second fascicle at hand, and picked it up.)
CHAPTER THE SECOND
NETTIE
§ 1
I cannot now remember (the story resumed), what interval separated that evening on which Parload first showed me the comet—I think I only pretended to see it then—and the Sunday afternoon I spent at Checkshill.