“I thought it all over that night.  I visualized readily enough what had happened.  Robert Turold, returning to England with some concocted story of my death, had swept her off her feet, caught her on the rebound.  He had returned a prosperous man, and doubtless his love-making was reinforced by Alice’s worldly parents and the match-making old aunt.  The combination was a strong one, and I was supposed to be dead.  So she married him, without breathing a word to anybody of her previous secret marriage to me.  I realized that at once.  She would be too afraid—­left to herself.  She would tell herself that it wasn’t worth while—­that nobody need ever know now.  I could imagine her twisting her little hands together in apprehension as she faced the problem—­our secret—­then gradually becoming calmer as something whispered in her ear that it was her secret now, and need not be told.  You see, I knew her nature so well.  There are many such natures—­gentle souls who shrink from responsibility in a world which, sooner or later, generally sees to it that we are compelled to shoulder the burden of our own acts.

“I was not long in making up my mind.  I determined to do nothing.  I take no special credit to myself for that decision.  The marriage with Robert Turold was an accomplished fact, and my belated reappearance upon the scene would have plunged her in unhappiness.  She was about to become a mother, too.  That weighed with me.  I loved her far too well to injure her or her child.  It meant letting Robert Turold go free if I remained dead, but there are other things in life besides money and revenge.  Fortunately the position from the practical point of view was simplified by the death of my only relative, my uncle, during my absence from England, who had bequeathed his small property to me—­not much, but sufficient for my own simple needs.

“I took my uncle’s name, the better to conceal my identity, and resumed the medical studies which had been interrupted by my departure from England four years before.  When I received my degree I searched for a remote spot where I was not likely to encounter any one who had known me in my past life, and chose this lonely part of the Cornish coast.  And here I have remained for thirty years.

“They have not been unhappy years.  It was not my disposition to waste my life by hugging the illusions of the past.  My days were occupied walking long distances to see my patients scattered at distant intervals on this desolate coast, and my nights I spent in antiquarian and archaeological studies, which were always a favourite pursuit of mine.  It was a hobby which earned me some local repute in the course of the years, and was ultimately the means of bringing me face to face with Robert Turold again.  That was the last thing in the world I desired to happen.  In the early years I used to think of him wedded to my wife, and wonder whether he had succeeded in his great ambition.  After a while the memory faded, as most memories do with the passing of the years.