back to him first
a recollection of his suppressed commonplace about the stone that had
vanished for ever in the world of waters; then a hazy memory of the
same thing having happened before and the same remark having been
made by himself; then a sudden jerk of surprise, when, just as he was
thinking of sleep, he was able to answer a question Space asked him
spontaneously about where this happened, with what would have been,
had he been quite awake, words spoken aloud to himself. "That time
at Niagara, of course!" And this jerk of surprise left him wide-awake,
struggling with an army of revived memories that had come on him
suddenly.

He was so thoroughly waked by them that a difficulty he always had
of remaining in bed when not asleep dictated a relighted candle
and a dressing-gown and slippers. It was akin to his aversion to
over-comfortable chairs; though he acknowledged beds as proper
implements of sleep, sleep being granted. And sleep seemed now so
completely out of the question, even if there had been no roaring of
the gale and no constant thunder of the seas on the beach below,
that Fenwick surrendered at discretion, and gave himself up a helpless
prisoner in the grasp of his own past.

Not of the whole of it. But of as much as he could face here and now.
Another mind that could have commanded some strange insight into the
whole of this past, and his power or powerlessness to look it in the
face, might have striven to avert its revival. That blow might have
been too overwhelming. But there was enough, as we shall see, in
the recollection that came back of the decade before his return to
England, to make his breath catch and a shudder run through his strong
frame as he pressed his palms hard on his eyelids, just as though by
so doing he could shut it out.

Thank God Rosey was asleep, or would be soon. He would have time to
think how he could tell the story he could not be silent about--that,
he felt, might be impossible--and yet keep back one ominous portentous
fact that had come to him, as a motive force in his former life,
without the details of his early history that belonged to it. That
fact Rosey must never know, even if ... well!--so many things turned
on it. All he could see now--taken by surprise as he was--was that,
come what might, that fact should always be kept from _her_. But as
to concealing from her his strange experience altogether, that was
hardly to be thought of. He would conceal it while he