nts, the Arcadian shepherdess and the thunderbolt. Obviously
a reality! Besides--so ran the doctor's thought--with her looking
like _that_, what can I do? He felt perfectly helpless, but wouldn't
confess it. He would make an effort. One thing he was certain of: that
evasion, with those eyes looking at him, would mean instant shipwreck.

"We had a long talk, dear Miss Sally, about how much Jeremiah"--a
slight accent on the name has the force of inverted commas in
text--"can really recollect of his own history." But Sally's reply
takes a form of protest, without seeming warranty.

"I say, Dr. Conrad, I wish you wouldn't.... However, never mind that
now. I want to know about Jeremiah. Has he remembered a lot more, and
not told?"

"He goes on recovering imperfect versions of things. He told me a good
many such yesterday--so imperfect that I am convinced as his mind
clears he will find that some of them, though founded on reality, are
little better than dreams. He can't rely on them himself.... But what
is it you wish I wouldn't?"

"Oh, nothing!--I'll tell you after. Never mind that now. What are the
things--I mean, the things he recovers the imperfect versions of? You
needn't tell me the versions, you know, but you might tell me what
they were versions of, without any breach of confidence." Dr. Conrad
has not time for more than a word or two towards the obvious protest
against this way of stating the case, before Sally becomes frankly
aware of her own unfairness. "No, I won't worm out and inquisit,"
she says--and we are bound to give her exact language. "It isn't
fair on a general practitioner to take him for a walk and get at
his professional secrets." The merry eyebrows and the pearly teeth,
slightly in abeyance for a serious moment or two, are all in evidence
again as the black eyes flash round on the doctor, and, as it were,
convey his reprieve to him. He acknowledges it in this sense.

"I'm glad you don't insist upon my telling, Miss Sally. If you had
insisted, I should have had to tell." He paused a second, drawing an
inference from an expression of Sally's face, then added: "Well, it's
true...."

"I wasn't thinking of that." This refers to her intention to say
something, which never fructified; but somehow got communicated,
magnetically perhaps, to Dr. Conrad. "Never mind what, now. Because
if your soles are as slippy as mine are, we shall never get up. Catch
hold!"

This last refers to the necessity two tra