And while we are making stupendous efforts to recapture some such thing, does it ever occur to any of us to ask if we may not be mistaken in our tacit assumption that we are quite certain to remember everything else as soon as we try? That, in fact, it may be our memory-faculty itself that is in fault and that we are only failing to recall one thing because at the moment it is that one sole thing, and no other, that we are trying our brains against. It was so in the pause of a few minutes in which this man we write of, left to himself and the ticking of the clock, and hearing, through the activity of the bluebottle and the monotony of the ceiling flies, the murmur of a distant conversation between his late companions, who for the moment had left him alone, tried in vain to recover his particular thread of memory, without any uneasiness about the innumerable skeins that made up the tissue of his record of a lifetime. When the young doctor returned, he found him still seated where he had left him, one hand over his eyes, the other on his knee. As he sat--for the doctor watched him from the door for a moment--he moved and replaced either hand at intervals, with implied distress in the movements. They gave the impression of constant attempt constantly baffled. The doctor, a shrewd-seeming young man with an attentive pale eye, and very fair hair, seemed to understand. "Let me recommend you to be quiet and rest. Be quite quiet. You will be all right when you have slept on it. Mrs. Nightingale--that's the lady you saw just now; this is her house--will see that you are properly taken care of." Then the man tried to speak; it was with an effort. "I wish to thank--I must thank----" "Never mind thanks yet. All in good time. Now, what do you think you can take--to eat or drink?" "Nothing--nothing to eat or drink." "Well, you know best. However, there's tea coming; perhaps you'll go so far as a cup of tea? You would be the better for it." * * * * * Rosalind junior, or Sally, slept in the back bedroom on the first-floor--that is to say, if we ignore the basement floor and call the one flush with the street-door step the ground-floor. We believe we are right in doing so. Rosalind senior, the mother, slept in the front one. It wasn't too late for tea, they had decided, and thereupon they had gone upstairs to revise and correct. After a certain amount of slopping and splashing in the back room, uncorroborated by any in the front, Sally called out to her mother, on the disjointed lines of talk in real life: "I like this soap! Have you a safety-pin?" Whereto her mother replied, speaking rather drowsily and perfunctorily: "Yes, but you must come and get it." "It's so nice and oily. It's not from Cattley's?" "Yes, it is." "I thought it was. Where's the pin?" At this point she came into her mother's room, covering her slightly _retrousse_ nose with her fresh-washed hands, to enjoy the aroma of Cattley's soap.