"Asleep!" I was contemptuous. "No, he's awake. Ponto and I are pals. We understand each other. He had a hang-over and I fixed him. We're buddies now, aren't we, old fellow?" The answer was a low savage growl and I leaped through the door barely in time to escape his earnest but rather shaky attempt to remove a couple of pounds of meat from my exterior. "Hell!" I explained, "that beast's not human. Let's send him back to the vet's and get something easier to live with--a Yorkshire or a poodle." "I'd like a Chihuahua," said Germaine, "or one of those little Belgian Schipperke gadgets." "How about a collie?" I asked. Germaine raised piteous eyes to me. "Do you want to make me ill, with your talk of collies?" she asked. "Now come on down to the den and tell me what's been going on in town." "Well, Jimmie," I began, "it's a long, long story--" CHAPTER 14 "If it's going to be long," she said, "we'd both better have a drink. You always think better if you have a glass in your hand." "Now, what is it you want to know?" I answered, after we were comfortably settled in front of the electric fire. "It's--it's just that everything is so queer," Germaine began. "You've changed so that you almost seem like a different person. You even look better, not so flabby, as though you took regular exercise. At least I see a change, and then suddenly I find that you've been carrying on with that Briggs girl and I can't tell whether you've really changed or are just trying to fool me. She's a nice person, of course, and if you _must_ have another girl, I'd rather have you pick someone--oh--safe and comfortable like her. But you said you hadn't been playing with the office girls. And then there's Ponto. He used to adore you and you swore by him. Now he tries to bite you and you want to get rid of him. And then there's all this talk about where you were during Holy Week and that F.B.I. man and Myrtle tells me they've been asking a lot of questions about you and Virginia. What _have_ you been doing, dear, that you can't remember when our whole life may depend on it?" "Jimmie," I told her. "I wish to God I knew. You must believe me when I tell you I can't remember things before Easter Monday. That was the second and today is the eleventh and I can remember everything that's happened since then. Before that it is all blank and all mixed-up in that dream I had." She moved away from me, slightly. "You can't tell me that the F.B.I. would be interested in your dreams," she said sharply. "Not in time of war."