'
Shortly after this my father and I spent the autumn in various parts
of Switzerland. One night, when we were sitting outside the chalet in
the full light of the moon, I was the witness of a display of passion
on the part of one whom I had always considered to be a dreamy
book-worm--a passionless, eccentric mystic--that simply amazed me. A
flickering tongue from the central fires suddenly breaking up through
the soil of an English vegetable garden could hardly have been a more
unexpected phenomenon to me than what occurred on that memorable
night.
The incident I am going to relate showed me how rash it is to suppose
that you have really fathomed the personality of any human creature.
The mementos of his first wife, which accompanied him whithersoever
he went, absorbed his attention in Switzerland, and especially in the
little place where she was born, far more than they had done at home.
He was for ever peeping furtively into his escritoire to enjoy the
sight of them, and then looking over his shoulder to see if he was
being watched by my mother, though she was far away in Raxton Hall.
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