"I can't help it, Becky. The idea, the knowledge, is my very life and
soul; and when you think it all over you will see that there are many
things that cannot be explained--Weir's words in the gallery, for
instance. They coincide exactly with the vision I had four nights
later. And a dozen other things--you can think them out for yourself.
When you do, you will understand that there is but one light in which
to look at the question: Weir Penrhyn and I are Lionel Dartmouth and
Sionèd Penrhyn reborn, and that is the end of the matter."

Hollington groaned, and threw himself back in his chair with an
impatient gesture.

"Well," he said, after a few moments' silence, "accepting your
remarkable premisses for the sake of argument, will you kindly
enlighten me as to since when you became so beautifully complete
and altogether puerile a moralist? Suppose you did sin with her some
three-quarters of a century ago, have not time and suffering purified
you both--or rather her? I suppose it does not make so much difference
about you."

"It is not that. It is the idea that is revolting--that this girl
should have been my mistress at any time--"

"But, great heaven! Harold, such a sin is a thing of the flesh, not of
the spirit, and the physical part of Sionèd Penrhyn has enriched the
soil of Constantinople these sixty years. She has committed no sin in
her present embodiment."

"Sin is an impulse, a prompting, of the spirit," said Dartmouth.