her right hand. That was on the 4th of August, 1913.

PART III

I

THE odd thing is that what sticks out in my recollection of the rest
of that evening was Leonora's saying:

"Of course you might marry her," and, when I asked whom, she
answered:

"The girl."

Now that is to me a very amazing thing--amazing for the light of
possibilities that it casts into the human heart. For I had never had
the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; I never had the
slightest idea even of caring for her. I must have talked in an odd
way, as people do who are recovering from an anaesthetic. It is as
if one had a dual personality, the one I being entirely unconscious
of the other. I had thought nothing; I had said such an
extraordinary thing. I don't know that analysis of my own
psychology matters at all to this story. I should say that it didn't or,
at any rate, that I had given enough of it. But that odd remark of
mine had a strong influence upon what came after. I mean, that
Leonora would probably never have spoken to me at all about
Florence's relations with Edward if I hadn't said, two hours after
my wife's death:

"Now I can marry the girl."