nstantly changing her attitude, rising
and seating herself, and walking excitedly about. She would talk rapidly
one moment, and then relapse into a sudden chilled silence in which she
seemed to hear nothing. Once or twice she laughed a hard, unnatural laugh
of pure nervousness.

Presently she said--

"After I've forgotten all about myself, and no longer remember any reason
why I shouldn't marry you, you will still remember what I've forgotten,
and perhaps you won't want me."

"You know very well that I want you any way, and just the same whatever
happens or doesn't happen," he answered.

"I wonder whether it will be fair to let you marry me after I've
forgotten," she continued, thoughtfully. "I don't know, but I ought to
make you promise now that you won't ask me to be your wife, for, of
course, I shouldn't then know any reason for refusing you."

"I wouldn't promise that."

"Oh, but you wouldn't do so mean a thing as to take an unfair advantage
of my ignorance," she replied. "Any way, I now release you from your
engagement to marry me, and leave you to do as you choose tomorrow after
I've forgotten. I would make you promise not to let me marry you then, if
I did not feel that utter forgetfulness of the past will leave me as pure
and as good as if--as if--I were like other women;" and she burst into
tears, and cried bitterly for a while.

The completeness with which she had given herself up to the belief that
on the morrow her memory was to be wiped clean of the sad past,
alternately terrified him and momentarily seduced him to share the same
fool's paradise of fancy. And it is needless to say that the thought of
receiving his wife to his arms as fresh and virgin in heart and memory as
when her girlish beauty first entranced him, was very sweet to his
imagination.

"I suppose I'll have mother with me then," she said, musingly. "How
strange it will be! I've been thinking about it all day. I shall often
find her looking at me oddly, and ask her what she is thinking of, and
she will put me off. Why, Henry, I feel as dying persons do about having
people look at their faces after they are dead. I shouldn't like to have
any of my enemies who knew all about me see me after I've forgotten.
You'll take care that they don't, won't you, Henry?"

"Why, dear, that is morbid. What is it to a dead person, whose soul is in
heaven, who looks at his dead face? It will be so with you after
to-morrow if the process succeeds."