not that almost, _almost_,
carry with it a kind of compensation for what she had undergone?

But her terror of seeing a return of memory now was a haunting
nightmare to her. She could only soothe and alleviate her anxiety
by suggesting efforts at recollection to Fenwick, and observing with
concealed satisfaction how utterly useless they all were. She felt
guilty at heart in being so happy at his ill-success, and had to
practise an excusable hypocrisy, an affectation of disappointment at
his repeated failures. On one particular occasion a shudder of
apprehension passed through her; she thought he had got a clue. If he
did, what was to prevent his following it up? She found it hard to say
to him how sorry she was this clue led to nothing, and to forecast
from it encouragement for the future. But she said to herself after
that, that she was a good actress, and had played her part well. The
part was a hard one.

For what came about was this. It chanced one evening, some three
months after the railway adventure, when Fenwick had become an
accepted and constant visitor at Krakatoa Villa, that as he took a
very late leave of Sally and her mother, the latter came out with him
into the always quiet road, while Sally ran back into the house to
direct a letter he was to post, but which had been forgotten for the
moment, just as he was departing.

They had talked a great deal, and with a closer familiarity than ever
before, of the problem of Fenwick's oblivion. Both ladies had gone on
the lines of suggesting clues, trying to recall to him the things that
_must_ have been in his life as in others. How about his parents?
Well, he remembered that, as a fact, he had a father and mother. It
was _themselves_ he could not recollect. How about his schooldays? No,
that was a blank. He could not even remember having been flogged. Yet
the idea of school was not unfamiliar; how, otherwise, could he laugh
as he did at the absurdity of forgetting all about it, especially
being flogged? But his brothers, his sisters, how _could_ he forget
_them_? He _did_, although in their case, as in that of his parents,
he somehow knew that some definite identities had existed that he had
forgotten. But any effort to recall any specific person came to
nothing, or else he only succeeded in reviving images manifestly
confused with characters in fiction or history. Then Sally, who was
rather incredulous about this complete vacuity of mind, had said to
him: "