You will think—if the shock of what I have had to tell you has left you any power to care or to think about my narrow world—that a romancer such as I (or a true dramatist, such as you) would not be able to keep such a secret for nigh on thirty years (think, Randolph, thirty years), without bringing about some peripeteia, some dénouement, some secret hinting or open scene of revelation.
