t would come
back that every hour that passed without an alarm was another step
towards a safe haven; and who could say that in a week or so things
might not be, at least, no worse than they were before this pestilent
little galvanic battery broke in upon her peace?

The fact that he had spoken of new memories to Vereker and had not
repeated them to her was no additional source of uneasiness; rather,
if anything, the contrary. For she could not entertain the idea that
Gerry would keep back from her anything he could tell to Vereker. What
had actually happened was necessarily inconceivable by her--that
a _recollected recollection_ of his own marriage with her should be
interpreted by him as a memory of a marriage with some other woman
unknown, who might, for anything he knew, be still living; that his
inference as to the bearing of this on his own conduct was that he
should refrain, at any cost to himself, from claiming, so to speak,
his own identity; should accept the personality chance had forced upon
him for her sake; should even forego the treasure of her sympathy,
more precious far to him than the heavy score to his credit at the
banks of New York and San Francisco, rather than dig up what needs
must throw doubt on the validity of their marriage, and turn her path
of life, now smooth, to one of stones and thorns. For that was the
course he had sketched out for himself; and had it only been possible
for oblivion to draw a sharp line across the slowly reviving record,
and to say to memory: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther,"
Fenwick might have persevered in this course successfully till now.
And then all our story would have been told--at least, as far as
Rosalind and Fenwick go. And we might say farewell to them at this
moment as the cows reluctantly surrender passage-way of the long short
cut, and Gerry saunters on, seemingly at ease from his own mind's
unwelcome activities, with Sally on one arm and his wife in the other,
and Mrs. Grundy nowhere. But no conspiracies are possible to memory
and oblivion. They are a couple that act independently and consult
nobody's convenience but their own.

It may easily be that Rosalind, had she been mistress of all the facts
and taken in the full position, would have decided to run the risks
incidental to confronting her husband with his own past--taken him
into her confidence and told him. With the chance in view that his
reason might become unsettled from the chronic to