'I cannot--if you do not remember anything. You come late in the morning--sometimes two hours late. You think it is only ten o'clock when it is twelve. You do not know where you have been for the last two hours. Try to remember that. You were late on Saturday morning. Perhaps this morning. Where were you?' His face was quite white. He understood that something was going--soon--to happen. 'I know not, Elsie--indeed--I cannot remember. Where was I?' 'You leave here at five. You have ordered dinner, and your housekeeper tells me that you come home at ten or eleven. Where are you all that time?' 'I am at the Club.' 'Can you remember? Think--were you at the Club last night? George went there to find you, but you were not there--and you were not at home. Where were you?' He tried to speak--but he could not. He shook his head--he gasped twice. 'You cannot remember? Oh! try--Mr. Dering--try--for the sake of everybody--to put an end to this miserable condition--try.' 'I cannot remember,' he said again feebly. 'Is it possible--just possible--that while you are away--during these intervals--you yourself may be actually--in the company--of this Socialist--this Edmund Gray?' 'Elsie--what do you mean?' 'I mean--can you not remember?' 'You mean more, child! Do you know what you mean? If what you suggest is true, then I must be mad--mad. Do you mean it? Do you mean it? Do you understand what you say?' 'Try--try to remember,' she replied. 'That is all I mean. My dear guardian, is there any one to whom I am more grateful than yourself? You have given me a fortune and my lover an income. Try--try to remember.' She left him without more words. He sat looking straight before him--the horror of the most awful thing that can befall a man upon him. Presently, he touched his bell, and his old clerk appeared. 'Checkley,' he said, 'tell me the truth.' 'I always do,' he replied surlily. 'I have been suffering from fits of forgetfulness. Have you observed any impairing of the faculties? When a man's mental powers are decaying, he forgets things: he loses the power of work: his old skill leaves him: he cannot distinguish between good work and bad. He shows his mental decay, I believe, in physical ways--he shuffles as he walks; he stoops and shambles--and in his speech--he wanders and he repeats--and in his food and manner of eating. Have you observed any of these symptoms upon me, Checkley?' 'Not one. You are as upright as a lance: you eat like five-and-twenty: your talk is as good and your work is as good as when you were forty.--Don't think such things. To be sure you do forget a bit. But not your work. You only forget sometimes what you did out of the office--as if that matters. Do you remember the case you tackled yesterday afternoon?' 'Certainly.' 'Do you tell me that any man--forty years younger than you--could have tackled that case more neatly? Garn! Go 'long!' Checkley went back to his office.