"What is 'almost knowing'? But tell me this. When I call you Gerry--Gerry ... there!--does the association or impression repeat itself?" She repeated the name once and again, to try. There was a good deal of nettle-grasping in all this. Also a wish to clinch matters, to drive the sword to the hilt; to put an end, once and for all, to the state of tension she lived in. For surely, if anything could prove his memory was really gone, it would be this. That she should call him by his name of twenty years ago--should utter it to him, as she could not help doing, in the tone in which she spoke to him then, and that her doing so should arouse no memory of the past--surely this would show, if anything could show it, that that past had been finally erased from the scroll of his life. She had a moment only of suspense after speaking, and then, as his voice came in answer, she breathed again freely. Nothing could have shown a more complete unconsciousness than his reply, after another moment of reflection: "Do you know, Mrs. Nightingale, that convinces me that the name Algernon _was_ produced by your way of saying it. It _was_ hypnotic suggestion! I assure you that, however strange you may think it, every time you repeat the name Gerry, it seems more familiar to me. If you said it often enough, I have no doubt I should soon be believing in the diminutive as devoutly as I believe in the name itself. Because I am quite convinced of Algernon Fenwick. Continually signing _per-pro_'s has driven it home." He didn't seem quite in earnest over his conviction, though--seemed to laugh a little about it. But a sadder tone came into his voice after an interval in which his companion, frightened at her own temerity, resolved that she would not call him Gerry again. It was sailing too near the wind. She was glad he went back from this side-channel of their talk to the main subject. "No, I have no hope of getting to the past through my own mind. I feel it is silence. And that being so, I should be sorry that any illumination should come to me out of the past, throwing light on records my mind could not read--I mean, any proof positive of what my crippled memory could not confirm. I would rather remain quite in the dark--unless, indeed----" "Unless what?" "Unless the well-being of some others, forgotten with my forgotten world, is involved in--dependent on--my return to it. That would be shocking--the hungry nestlings in the deserted nest. But I am so convinced that I have only forgotten a restless life of rapid change--that I _could_ not forget love and home, if I ever had them--that my misgivings about this are misgivings of the reason only, not of the heart. Do you understand me?" "Perfectly. At least, I think so. Go on."