He would have liked to invent something, get her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or critical kind _had_ originally occurred. He was really almost reaching out in imagination--as against time--for something that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled. They would separate, and now for no second or no third chance. They would have tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn, as he afterwards made it out to himself, that, everything else failing, she herself decided to take up the case and, as it were, save the situation. He felt as soon as she spoke that she had been consciously keeping back what she said and hoping to get on without it; a scruple in her that immensely touched him when, by the end of three or four minutes more, he was able to measure it. What she brought out, at any rate, quite cleared the air and supplied the link--the link it was so odd he should frivolously have managed to lose. "You know you told me something I've never forgotten and that again and again has made me think of you since; it was that tremendously hot day when we went to Sorrento, across the bay, for the breeze. What I allude to was what you said to me, on the way back, as we sat under the awning of the boat enjoying the cool. Have you forgotten?" He had forgotten, and was even more surprised than ashamed. But the great thing was that he saw in this no vulgar reminder of any "sweet" speech. The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake. With another woman, a totally different one, he might have feared the recall possibly even some imbecile "offer." So, in having to say that he had indeed forgotten, he was conscious rather of a loss than of a gain; he already saw an interest in the matter of her mention. "I try to think--but I give it up. Yet I remember the Sorrento day." "I'm not very sure you do," May Bartram after a moment said; "and I'm not very sure I ought to want you to. It's dreadful to bring a person back at any time to what he was ten years before. If you've lived away from it," she smiled, "so much the better." "Ah if _you_ haven't why should I?" he asked. "Lived away, you mean, from what I myself was?" "From what _I_ was. I was of course an ass," Marcher went on; "but I would rather know from you just the sort of ass I was than--from the moment you have something in your mind--not know anything." Still, however, she hesitated. "But if you've completely ceased to be that sort--?" "Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I haven't."