But the most surprising part of the story was that she'd actually been to some great house, and there fancied that she'd seen me. I couldn't follow all the ins and outs of the business as she told it, but what I did understand fairly took my breath away. 'Do you mean to tell me,' I said, 'that you mistook another man for your own husband?' She was ashamed. No wonder. 'What would you think if I mistook another woman for you?' 'James!' Down came her face against mine. Was there anything I wouldn't forgive her when the touch of her cheek filled me with so sweet a rapture? 'Do you know, Mary, I don't understand all you've been talking about--though I know I ought to, considering what a gift for narrative you have.' 'James!' 'But what I do understand makes me think of something that happened to me--ah, years and years ago. Have you ever heard of a place called San Francisco?' She nodded. ''Pon my word, I don't think there's anything you haven't heard of. You're a much greater scholar, wife of mine, than you care to own.' She laughed, and snuggled closer. 'Once upon a time I was in San Francisco.' 'James, I do believe that you've been everywhere.' 'There's only one place where I've ever wanted to be, and that's in your heart.' 'You know you're there.' 'Mary!' Then there was an interval. There were a good many intervals before I'd finished my remarks. Nothing like an interruption now and then to give you what I call zest. She listened with the prettiest interest. Just as she'd have listened if I'd recited one of Euclid's propositions. She cared nothing for my story. All she wanted was to know, and to feel, that I was there. The consciousness that her evil dreams had vanished was sufficient. When she pressed herself against me, and felt how my heart kept time with hers, and how her tremors set me trembling, that was all the explanation she required. A woman's love has nothing to equal it in its power of forgetting. If she loves you you needn't ask her to forgive you; she forgets that she has anything to forgive. We had tea, and Pollie and Jimmy and I made toast, and she superintended the proceedings. She considered that we weren't so good at it as we ought to have been; so she showed us how to improve. When I said that the chief thing she'd toasted was her cheeks, she whispered that I wasn't to say such things; so I kissed them instead. Whereupon she asserted that that piece of toast was spoilt; but we ate it all the same. And I declared, as I was eating it, that I could detect, from the taste, the exact spot on which she was engaged when the accident occurred. Which statement she positively asserted that she didn't believe.