"Because it _is_ forgetting!" he cried triumphantly, echoing and confirming my own abstruse meditation as I had watched the shirley poppies over the ramparts. "I say, I mustn't shout, though. I'm not supposed to know any English except the few words Jennie's taught me. Great jokes we've had about that! So doesn't this prove it? Why, what am I doing remembering things all that time ago? I'm not perfectly right till I've forgotten every single thing! And I'm forgetting without trying; you can't try to forget. Heaps of things have gone besides French--heaps of English things. Why, I've forgotten----" "You remember me?" "Yes. I met you at the Airds. I told you the whole story out at Le Port one night. You can't have forgotten!" "Hadn't we met before then?" "Yes, I think we had. There was a pond, wasn't there? Wasn't it at some house with a pond?" "Do you remember a Miss Oliphant?" "Oliphant? Yes--wait a bit--yes I do. I'd met her somewhere or other too. But the last time I saw her was when she came for a bicycle. Why they should have sent her I don't know, but of course I knew there was a storm blowing up, so I simply gave her the bicycle and showed her a few sketches, and let it go at that." "You don't remember where you'd met her before, do you?" "I know it was in England somewhere. But I didn't know you knew her till Jennie told me." "You really didn't know I knew Miss Oliphant?" "Honestly I didn't, Sir George." I was silent as Jennie reappeared. And yet, if she knew all, as he said, why the caution of silence? It seemed to me that with the clearing up of one other point I should have an idea of how matters really stood. I turned to Jennie. "Derry's still talking about the great news," I said. "He says you know all about it. Well, I want you to tell me one thing. Does he remember everything that's happened since he first saw you?" Derry answered for her, with a soft laugh. "Do I remember that! Why, it's all I'm going to know presently!" "Has your 'B' memory quite gone?" "Quite, so far as I can say." "And your 'A' is going, and you're starting a brand-new one from the moment you met Jennie?" "Not 'met.' 'Saw.' That's it exactly. Couldn't have been better put." "And"--I hesitated, but took my fence--"that's all? Nothing else has gone?" "What do you mean, Sir George? Only the remembered things are going. _I'm_ the same, if that's what you mean." "The same that you always were?" "Well"--he made a simple gesture with his open hands--"if I don't remember what I was I can't very well tell that, can I?" "You still do a little, but it's going, and soon you won't at all?" "Exactly. _Now_ do you see what I mean?"