She had promised to meet Mr. Edmund Gray at his Chambers that evening at five. He showed his confidence in her by giving her a latch-key, so that she might let herself in if he happened not to be in the Chambers when she called, at five. She would try, then, to bring him back to himself. She pictured his amazement--his shame--at finding himself in strange rooms under another name, preaching wild doctrines. It would be too much for him. Better go to Mr. Dering, the real Mr. Dering, and try to move him in his own office, to recollect what had happened. Because, you see, Elsie, unacquainted with these obscure forms of brain disease, imagined that she might by artful question and suggestion clear that clouded memory, and show the lawyer his double figuring as a Socialist. She waited till the afternoon. She arrived at New Square about three, two hours before her engagement at Gray's Inn. Mr. Dering received her with his usual kindness. He was austerely benignant. 'I tried to see you last night,' she said, untruthfully, because the words conveyed the impression that she had called upon him. 'No--no. I was-- I suppose I was out. I went out----' His face clouded, and he stopped. 'Yes--you were saying, Mr. Dering, that you went out.' 'Last night was Sunday, wasn't it? Yes; I went out.--Where did I go?' He drummed the table with his fingers irritably. 'Where did I go? Where?--What does it matter?' 'Nothing at all. Only it is strange that you should not remember.' 'I told you once before, Elsie,' he said, 'I suffer--I labour--under curious fits of forgetfulness. Now, at this moment, I--it really is absurd--I cannot remember where I was last night. I am an old man. It is the privilege of age to forget yesterday, and to remember fifty years ago.' 'I was talking last night to an old gentleman who said much the same. He has Chambers where he goes to write: he has a Lecture Hall--where he preaches to the people----' Mr. Dering looked at her in mild surprise. What did she mean? Elsie coloured. 'Of course,' she said, 'this has nothing to do with you.' 'How I spent the evening I know very well,' Mr. Dering went on. 'Yet I forget. That is the trouble with me. My housekeeper will not give me dinner on Sunday evening, and on that day I go to my Club. I get there about five or six: I read the magazines till seven. Sometimes I drop off to sleep--we old fellows will drop off, you know--about seven I have dinner. After dinner I take my coffee, and read or talk if there is any one I know. About nine I walk home. That has been my custom for many years. Therefore, that is how I spent the evening of yesterday.--But, you see, I cannot remember it. Breakfast I remember, and the Church service afterwards. Luncheon I remember: getting home at ten I remember. But the interval between I cannot remember.' 'Do you forget other things? Do you remember Saturday afternoon, for instance?'