exhausted
when the decision was come to that he should remain where he was;
till next morning, at any rate. The lady of the house--of course the
principal factor in the solution of the problem--appeared, as we have
seen, to have made up her mind on the subject. And probably her
daughter had been enough influenced by the stranger's manner and
appearance, even in the short period of the interview we have just
described, to get rid of a feeling she had of self-reproach for her
own rashness. We don't understand girls, but we ask this question of
those who do: Is it possible that Miss Sally was impressed by the
splendid arm with the name tattooed on it--an arm in which every
muscle told as in a Greek statue, without infringing on its
roundness--the arm of Theseus or Ilissus? Or was it the tone of his
voice--a musical one enough? Or merely his generally handsome face
and courteous manner?

He remained that night at the house, but next day still remembered
nothing. He wished to go on his way--destination not known; but
_somewhere_--and would have done so had it not been for Mrs.
Nightingale, whose opposition to his going was, thought Dr. Vereker,
almost more decisive than the case called for. So he remained on, that
day and the next, slowly regaining the use of his right hand. But his
memory continued a blank; and though he was not unable to converse
about passing events, he could not fix his attention, or only with
a great effort. What was very annoying to Sally was that he was
absolutely unable to account for his remark about her name and her
mother's in the railway-carriage. He could not even remember making
this. He could recall no reason why he should have made it, from any
of the few things that came back to his mind now--hazily, like ghosts.
Was he speaking the truth? Why not? Mrs. Nightingale asked. Why not
forget that as readily as anything else?

His distress at this inability to remember, to account for himself,
to himself or any one else, was almost painful to witness. The only
consolatory circumstance was that his use and knowledge of words
remained intact; it was his memory of actual incidents and people
in the past that was in fault. Definite effort to follow slight
clues remaining in his mind ended in failure, or only served to
show that their origin was traceable to literary fiction. But his
language-faculty seemed perfectly in order. It came out that he spoke
French fluently, and a little Spanish, but he w