Four years afterwards--six years ago--I married. It was all done in a week. So quick that I haven't got used to it yet. When I remember I'm married I brace myself, and a sort of shudder of wonder goes right through my bones. One promise I made to myself when I stood with her before the registrar--and to myself I always keep my word. That I'd keep her out of the mud in which I live, and move, and have my being. Whenever I've gone home to her I've left everything that wasn't clean outside. So that to this hour she's as simple as on the day on which I married her; and that's saying something; and she hasn't found me out. It's the queerest thing in the world to know that there's some one thinks you're good.
This encounter with Mr. John Smith is likely to cause a complication. As my life was already such an intricate piece of machinery, it didn't seem as if there was room for many more complications. But when he would have it that I was the Marquis of Twickenham, my thoughts flew back to that master of lies who was so like me, and who would have it that he was an English nobleman. It was something to wake from a thirty days' sleep--with occasional intervals for exercise and refreshment--to find oneself a Marquis. That interview with Mr. Smith at the York did tickle me. So I was a Marquis; and as a Marquis I was to die, for his benefit--and a thousand pounds. I'm a fool; we're all fools; but I'm not the kind of fool who can't see things when they're shown him. When he began to talk like that, I saw the infinite possibilities of the position in a flash. I'd had a go at some pretty big things in my time, but never at anything within a good few miles of this. The first thing was to die, and then---- Why then, we'd see. And so probably would Mr. Smith.
I died. I've died before, for money. Same as I've slept for thirty days. But it's not a pleasing pastime. Not the kind of thing I should recommend to any gentleman who's looking for some agreeable occupation with which to fill up his spare time. Especially when you have to ready yourself for it in two or three hours, as I had then. By the time you are ready you feel as if it was going to be a case of genuine death at last. I know I did. Then I had got up the game so thoroughly that I had to cling on to life by my eyelids.