ice. This time it was caught by a sort of gasp, and she
remained silent. What Sally _was_ had crossed her mind--the strange
relation in which she stood to Fenwick, born in _his_ wedlock, but no
daughter of his. And there he was, as fond of the child as he could be.

Fenwick may have half misunderstood something in her manner, for when
he spoke again his words had a certain aspect of recoil from what he
had said, at least of consideration of it in some new light.

"When I speak to you as freely as this, remember the nature of the
claim I have to do so--the only apology I can make for taking an
exceptional licence."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean I do not count myself as a man--only a sort of inexplicable
waif, a kind of cancelled man. A man without a past is like a child,
or an idiot from birth, suddenly endowed with faculties."

"What nonsense, Fenwick! You have brooded and speculated over your
condition until you have become morbid. Do now, as Sally would say,
chuck the metaphysics."

"Perhaps I was getting too sententious over it. I'm sorry, and please
I won't do so any more."

"Don't then. And now you'll see what will happen. You will remember
everything quite suddenly. It will all come back in a flash, and oh,
how glad you will be! And think of the joy of your wife and children!"

"Yes, and suppose all the while I am hating them for dragging me away
from you----"

"From me and Sally?"

"I wasn't going to say Sally, but I don't want to keep her out. You
and Sally, if you like. All I know is, if their reappearance were to
bring with it a pleasure I cannot imagine--because I cannot imagine
_them_--it would cut across my life, as it is now, in a way that would
drive me _mad_. Indeed it would. How could I say to myself--as I say
now, as I dare to say to you, knowing what I am--that to be here with
you now is the greatest happiness of which I am capable."

"All that would change if you recovered them."

"Yes--yes--maybe! But I shrink from it; I shrink from _them_! They are
strangers--nonentities. You are--you are--oh, it's no use----" He
stopped suddenly.

"What am I?"

"It's no use beating about the bush. You are the centre of my life as
it is, you are what I--all that is left of me--love best in the world!
I cannot _now_ conceive the possibility of anything but hatred for what
might come between us, for what might sever the existing link, whatever
it may be--I care little what it is called, so long as I