He had subsequently repeated He had vowed that books had a page from his book. never in the least interested him. I had particularly questioned I had not had an opportunity him about his memory. of questioning him. He had promised to take no He had taken a step without step without my knowledge. my knowledge. I did not think that he would He had broken it. knowingly break his word to me. Do you see whither it leads? You do; but let me state it as it struck me, sitting there watching the shirley poppies in the east with St Sauveur dark among the limes behind me. When you or I forget a thing our forgetting does not mean that that thing never was. Would to God it sometimes did! But you and I do not live backwards through our years, and we are dealing now with a man who did. Suppose, then, that this "A" memory were to go the way of his "B" one? And suppose in addition that, instead of merely resting on an even keel, he _should_ presently begin to forge ahead again? In that case he would once more be advancing on the unknown. His future to him would be what your future is to you, mine to me. And it is a condition of a future's being a future that it _shall not already have been_. What other future than that is there? There was no man living, Derwent Rose or anybody else, who had _not_ a future. And when a thing has not been it has not been, and there is the end of it. He was, quite simply, and exactly as you once were, exactly as I once was, young with a single age again. With the disappearance of his last "A" recollection, past time itself was abolished. For him forty-five was not, and never had been. And gone already was his memory of at least one event of hardly a week ago, namely, his promise to me. Nay, that must have gone before ever they fled, for nothing would have been easier for him than to send me a note demanding his release from his word. But gone how, and when? Remember, my own last actual sight of him had been by Fréhel's Light when we had stood by the Crucifix that overlooks St Briac harbour. My last direct word from him had been that note that Jennie had brought, in which he had reassured me that he was to be trusted, at any rate till I was out and about again. And my last news of him of any kind prior to their flight was that he had sat with Jennie among the sarrasin sheaves. Therefore whatever had happened had happened during the few days between his writing his note and Noble's discovery of them and speeding to Ker Annic with the tale. I counted these days one by one. On Wednesday he had written his note. I had received it on Thursday. On the following Saturday Julia Oliphant had arrived. On the Tuesday after, the day of my first walk abroad, Noble had conspicuously failed to mind his own business, and we had all been set by the ears.