And as I uttered the three words which are the greatest lever of power, both human and Divine, which the world has ever known--those words whereby Man is permitted to control the Actions of even God Himself--I knew that at last the door had been opened to Him Who stood outside and knocked. Once again the Galilean had conquered. CHAPTER XXII THE LAST OF THE WILDACRES I wrote to Isabel that I had changed my mind, and that I consented to have Frank at Restham for his convalescence: but I asked her to make it quite clear to him that I felt it as impossible now as I did two years ago to forgive him for having come between my wife and myself. I did not want to have him at the Manor on false pretences that everything was going to be smoothed over and made easy for him, as it had been always before: for even if such condoning of his fault had been possible on my part (which it was not), I knew him well enough to realise that it would be extremely bad for him. The fiat had gone forth from the altar of Restham Church on the occasion of my marriage with Fay: "Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Frank had done his best to put asunder two Divinely united persons, and had succeeded. Therefore I felt it was but meet that he should be punished as he deserved. To be allowed to sin with impunity is the most terrible curse that can fall on the head of any man: and I had no intention of becoming the instrument whereby this curse should be directed to the head of Frank Wildacre. Isabel sent him down to Restham in her car, and it was on a gloomy autumn day that he arrived. I met him at the door, and at the first moment was struck afresh by his marvellous likeness to Fay: it seemed almost as if my dead darling had come back to me, and for a second I was well-nigh unmanned. But after Jeavons had helped him in and laid him down on the large Chesterfield by the hall fire, I saw that he was not as much like Fay as I had at first thought. Both the Wildacres had always been slight and slender, but it was the slightness and slenderness of perfect health: now Frank's thinness amounted to positive emaciation, and his face was pinched and peaked. Moreover, he had lost that appearance of essential and eternal youth which had been so marked a characteristic of him and of Fay, and without which he hardly seemed a Wildacre at all. But in one thing he was unchanged, and that was in his perfect ease of manner and absolute unself-consciousness. Although I could see that it required all his self-control to enable him to respond naturally to my greeting, as indeed it required all my self-control to give it, nevertheless he succeeded: and I could not help admiring the pluck and courage of the boy when I remembered how much lay between his departure from the Manor and his return to it.