Nevertheless, when I came to consider how I had in so marvellous a manner established a reputation in the City, and had amassed the sum now lying at my bankers, I reflected that I could not have accomplished that without the exercise of considerable tact and mental capacity. I must, after all, have retained shrewd senses, but they had evidently been those of my other self--the self who had lived and moved as husband of that woman who called herself Mrs Heaton. "Tell me," I said, addressing Gedge again, "has my married life been a happy one?" He looked at me inquiringly. "Tell me the truth," I urged. "Don't conceal anything from me, for I intend to get at the bottom of this mystery." "Well," he said, with considerable hesitation, "scarcely what one might call happy, I think." "Ah, I understand," I said. "I know from your tone that you sympathise with me, Gedge." He nodded without replying. Strange that I had never known this man until an hour ago, and yet I had grown so confidential with him. He seemed to be the only person who could present to me the plain truth. Those six lost years were utterly puzzling. I was as one returned from the grave to find his world vanished, and all things changed. I tried to reflect, to see some ray of light through the darkness of that lost period, but to me it seemed utterly non-existent. Those years, if I had really lived them, had melted away and left not a trace behind. The events of my life prior to that eventful night when I had dined at The Boltons had no affinity to those of the present. I had ceased to be my old self, and by some inexplicable transition, mysterious and unheard of, I had, while retaining my name, become an entirely different man. Six precious years of golden youth had vanished in a single night. All my ideals, all my love, all my hope, nay, my very personality, had been swept away and effaced for ever. "Have I often visited Heaton--my own place?" I inquired, turning suddenly to Gedge. "Not since your marriage, I believe," he answered. "You have always entertained some curious dislike towards the place. I went up there once to transact some business with your agent, and thought it a nice, charming old house." "Ay, and so it is," I sighed, remembering the youthful days I had spent there long ago. All the year round was sunshine then, with the most ravishing snow-drifts in winter, and ice that sparkled in the sun so brilliantly that it seemed almost as jolly and frolicsome as the sunniest of sunlit streams, dancing and shimmering over the pebbles all through the cloudless summer. Did it ever rain in those old days long ago? Why, yes; and what splendid times I used to have on those occasions--toffee-making in the schoolroom, or watching old Dixon, the gamekeeper, cutting gun-wads in the harness-room.