"You see, if everything had gone normally, then ... then I should not have acted as I did. I have always been a practical man and I was proud of it and proud of living the normal life, my own life, which I lived in accordance with principles that I thought were right, until I reached a high place among my fellow-men. I have always been like that and things went well like that. Everything went swimmingly with me. When others were worrying about their promotion, I passed over the heads of five men at a bound. It was all plain sailing for me, at least in my official career. I have not been lucky in my domestic life, but I should never have been weak enough to break down on the road with grief because of that. A man has so much outside his domestic life. And yet I was always very fond of my family-circle. I don't think it was my fault that everything went as it did. I loved my wife, I loved my children, I loved my home, my home surroundings, in which I was the husband, and father. But that feeling in me was never fully satisfied. My first wife was a half-caste whom I married because I was in love with her. Because she could not get the upper hand of me with her whim-whams, things became impossible after a few years. I was perhaps even more in love with my second wife than with my first: I am simply constituted in these matters. But I was never allowed to have a pleasant home-circle, a pleasant, kindly wife, children climbing on your knees and growing up into men and women who owe their lives to you, their existence, in short, everything that they have and possess. That is what I should have liked to have. But, as I say, though I did not get it, that would never have pulled me under...." He was silent for a moment and then continued in an even more mysterious whisper: