e sands the tide is
leaving clear, after accommodating the few morning-bathers with every
opportunity to get out of their depths. "How do you _know_? Surely
the parts that you _do_ seem to remember clearly _must_ be all right,
however confused the rest is."

Fenwick gives his head the old shake, dashes his hair across his brow
and rubs it, then replies: "The worst of the job is, you see, that
the bits I remember clearest are the greatest gammon. What do you make
of that?"

Rosalind's hand closes on her nettle. "Instance, Gerry!--give me an
instance, and I shall know what you mean."

Fenwick is outrageously confident of the safety of his last imperfect
recollection. He can trust to its absurdity if he can trust to
anything.

"Well! For instance, just now--an hour ago--I recollected something
about a girl who would have it Rosalind in _As You Like It_ said,
'By my troth I take thee for pity,' to Orlando. And all the while it
was Benedict said it to Beatrice in _All's Well that Ends Well_."

The hand on the nettle tightens. "Gerry _dearest_!" she remonstrates.
"There's nothing in _that_, as Sallykin says. Of course it _was_
Benedict said it to Beatrice."

"Yes--but the gammon wasn't in that. It was the girl that said it.
When I tried to think who it was, she turned into _you_! I mean, she
became exactly like you."

"But I'm a woman of forty." This was a superb piece of
nettle-grasping; and there was not a tremor in the voice that said
it, and the handsome face of the speaker was calm, if a little pale.
Fenwick noticed nothing.

"Like what I should suppose you were as a girl of eighteen or twenty.
It's perfectly clear how the thing worked. It was from something else
I seem to recollect her saying, 'Like my namesake, Celia's friend in
Shakespeare.' The moment she said that, of course the name Rosalind
made me think you into the business. It was quite natural."

"Quite natural! And when I was that girl that was what I said." She
had braced herself up, in all the resolution of her strong nature,
to the telling of her secret, and his; and she thought this was her
opportunity. She was mistaken. For as she stood, keeping, as it were,
a heartquake in abeyance, till she should see him begin to understand,
he replied without the least perceiving her meaning--evidently
accounting her speech only a variant on "If I _had_ been that girl,"
and so forth--"Of course you did, sweetheart," said he, with a laugh
in his voice, "_