melt for ever into him who was your servant.
LADY MARY (shivering). You hurt me. You say these things, but you
say them like a king. To me it is the past that was not real.
CRICHTON (too grandly). A king! I sometimes feel--(For a moment the
yellow light gleams in his green eyes. We remember suddenly what
TREHERNE and ERNEST said about his regal look. He checks himself.) I
say it harshly, it is so hard to say, and all the time there is
another voice within me crying--(He stops.)
LADY MARY (trembling but not afraid). If it is the voice of nature--
CRICHTON (strongly). I know it to be the voice of nature.
LADY MARY (in a whisper). Then, if you want to say it very much,
Gov., please say it to Polly Lasenby.
CRICHTON (again in the grip of an idea). A king! Polly, some people
hold that the soul but leaves one human tenement for another, and so
lives on through all the ages. I have occasionally thought of late
that, in some past existence, I may have been a king. It has all
come to me so naturally, not as if I had had to work it out, but-as-
if-I-remembered.
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