"You will see. You need not be frightened of too many confidences. I haven't recollected any grave misdemeanours yet. I'll keep them to myself when they come. Now listen to what I can and do recollect pretty clearly." He paused a second, as if his first item was shaky; then said, "Yes!--of course." And went on as though the point were cleared up. "Of course! I went up to the Klondyke almost in the first rush, in '97. I'll tell you all about that after. Others besides myself became enormously rich that summer, but I was one of the luckiest. However, I don't want to tell you about Harrisson at Klondyke--(that's how I find it easiest to think of myself, third person singular!)--but to get at the thing in the dream, that concerns me most _now_. Listen!... Only remember this, Vereker dear! I can only recall jagged fragments yet awhile. I have been stunned, and can't help that...." He stopped the doctor, who was about to speak, with: "I know what you are going to say; let it stand over a bit--wait and be patient--all that sort of game! All very good and sensible, but I _can't_!" "Can't?" "No! Can't--simply _can't_. Because, look you! One of the things that has come back is that I am a married man--by which I mean that Harrisson was. Oh dear! It _is_ such an ease to me to think of Harrisson as somebody else. You can't understand that." But Vereker is thoroughly discomposed. "But didn't you say--only just now--there was nothing--_nothing_--to unsettle your present life? No; I can't understand--I _can't_ understand." His reply is to Fenwick's words, but the reference is to the early part of his speech. "You will understand it better if I tell you more. Let me do it my own way, because I get mixed, and feel as if I might lose the clue any moment. All the time I was with the Clemenceaux at Ontario I was a married man--I mean that I _knew_ I was a married man. And I remember knowing it all that time. Indeed, I did! But if you ask me who my wife was--she wasn't there, you know; you've got all that clear?--why, I can't tell you any more than Adam! All I know is that all that time little Ernestine was growing from a girl to a woman, the reason I felt there could be no misunderstanding on that score was that Clemenceau and his wife knew quite well I had been married and divorced or something--there was something rum, long before--and you know Papists would rather the Devil outright than have their daughter marry a divorced man. But as to who the wife had been, and what it was all about...." He stopped again suddenly, seizing Vereker by the arm with a strong hand that trembled as it had done before. His face went very white, but he kept self-possession, as it were mechanically; so completely that the long ash on his half-smoked cigar remained unbroken. He waited a moment, and then spoke in a controlled way.