"Where," I asked him as steadily as I could, "is your money in London?" "I have a little there," he said awkwardly. "How much?" "I don't quite know, but it's certainly more than five hundred francs." "Where did it come from?" Through the clear dark I saw his dusky flush. "I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have asked you. Never mind." "Derry," I said, greatly moved, "tell me: are you remembering things quite properly? You surely haven't forgotten that _I_ have your money?" "Eh?" he said. The next moment he had tried to cover his quick confusion. "Eh? Why, of course. What am I thinking of? It did slip my memory just for the moment; stupid! I'd got it mixed up somehow with Julia Oliphant. I was going to write to her. I remember, of course. You sold my furniture. You did sell it, didn't you?" "Yes." "How much did it fetch?" This time it was my turn to evade. "Well, as you say, more than five hundred francs. I--I haven't totted it up yet. I came away in rather a hurry. But there's quite a lot, and I can let you have all you want to-morrow." "Then that's all right," he said cheerfully. But I found it anything but all right. On the contrary, it was profoundly disturbing. If he could forget that he had authorised me to sell that black oak furniture of his he could forget more vital matters. Yet he had remembered the furniture when I had urged him. "Tell me," I said more quietly, "as simply as you can, exactly what you do and what you don't remember." "I only forgot it for a moment," he stammered. "But you did forget it. Can you explain it?" I felt that his mind laboured, struggled; but I was hardly prepared for what came next. "Just let me think for a minute. I want to get to the bottom of it too. It's a thing I've been watching most carefully, and I give you my word I remembered everything absolutely clearly up to a couple of hours ago. I knew all about that furniture when I came to that place for you, because as I walked along I was trying to work out how much it ought to amount to. In fact I wasn't coming to borrow at all, but just to ask you for something on account. Let me think. I got there at exactly at quarter to ten----" His fingers were playing with the wild flowers on the earth-wall. In and out through the whispering poplars the stars peeped. Every four seconds, every eleven seconds, four times a minute, rose and fell the Light. I fell to counting the intervals as I waited for his reply. Diamond, emerald, ruby, twinkled the lights at sea.... Then suddenly he sat up and took a deep breath. I saw his radiant smile. He faced me with the starlight in his eyes. "George," he said, "_who was that with you in the garden_?" IV