n, when the weeks went by and none was made, she began, at first
feebly, to hope that it was buried. Gradually the hope had swelled
into belief. Lately she had made sure that upon the first day, when
Anthony had wept in her arms, he and she had been treading upon its
grave. And now here it was--like a river full in their path, a
swift-flowing treacherous stream which they must ford together. She
would have given anything for a moment to collect her thoughts, but
Anthony had started across. Already he was up to his knees....

To be frank, she was in a tight place. The issues she had to deal with
were clogged. Her treatment of them was to be governed by ruthless
premises. Finally, if she made a false step, her fortunes and those of
Anthony would be again in the melting-pot.

For an instant her brain zig-zagged. The next moment she had it in
hand.

"Yes," she said slowly, "we were. I hoped you'd forgotten. You see,
I'm very much ashamed. And, when my eyes were opened, I was just
terrified. I felt as if I'd committed murder."

As she spoke, her brain fairly flashed through the rules which must
govern this talk.

Everything hinged upon one mighty postulate--that _Anthony had
collapsed precisely at one-fifteen upon the 16th of November_. He had,
of course, done nothing of the sort. But that did not matter.

_From that hour, for four months and a half, he had lain in a trance_.
This was the second article, which except Anthony believed, he could
not be saved.

Anthony's memory, however, was a faithful servant--not to be tampered
with. To reconcile the servant's report with the articles of his
faith, a third tenet became essential. This was that _what Anthony
remembered was the burthen of a dream_.

There go the governing principles.

Now for the issues.

Her sudden--perhaps excusable--jealousy of Anne Alison, her barbarous
dismissal of Anthony, her quite inexcusable failure to give any reason
for such treatment, her subsequent enlightenment by Anne herself--there
is the skeleton whose dry bones he and she are to pick over--a gruesome
business _which has already been dispatched_ ... upon the twentieth day
of February, gentlemen, up in the Cotswold Hills. They both remember
it perfectly. Yet Valerie must forget it, while Anthony must think it
was a dream ... _must_....

Neither by word nor look must Valerie suggest that the highly delicate
ground she knows so well has ever been broken before.