deserted her. He had acted like a brute and
she would hate him accordingly. Not him, but Rochester.

It was the same thing. The old story. Hatred, obloquy, disdain levelled
against Rochester affected him as though it were levelled against
himself. He could not take refuge in his own personality. Even on the
first day of his new life he had found that out at the club. Since then
the struggle to maintain his position and the battles he had fought had
steadily weakened his mental position as Jones, strengthened his
position as Rochester.

The strange psychological fact was becoming plain, though not to him,
that the jealousy he ought to have felt on account of this woman's love
for Rochester was not there.

This woman had fascinated him, as women had perhaps never fascinated a
man before; she had kissed him, she loved him, and though his reason
told him quite plainly that he was Victor Jones and that she loved and
had kissed another man, his heart did not resent that fact.

Rochester was dead. It seemed to him that Rochester had never lived.

He left the Park and came along Knightsbridge still thinking of her
sitting there waiting for him, his mind straying from that to the kiss,
the dinner, the bowl of roses that stood between them--her voice.

Then all at once these considerations vanished, all at once, and like an
extinguisher, fell on him that awful sensation of negation.

His mind pulled this way and that between contending forces, became a
blank written across with letters of fire forming the question:

"Who am I?"

The acutest physical suffering could not have been worse than that
torture of the over-taxed brain, that feeling that if he did not clutch
at _himself_ he would become nothing.

He ran for a few yards--then it passed and he found himself beneath a
lamp-post recovering and muttering his own name rapidly to himself like
a charm to exorcise evil.

"Jones--Jones--Jones."

He looked around.

There were not many people to be seen, but a man and woman a few yards
away were standing and looking at him. They had evidently stopped and
turned to see what he was about and they went on when they saw him
observing them.

They must have thought him mad.

The hot shame of the idea was a better stimulant than brandy. He walked
on. He was no longer thinking of the woman he had just left. He was
thinking of himself.

He had been false to himself.

The greatest possession any man can have in the world i