WILLIAM. Suppose—I only say suppose—it were not true. I mean, can we be so certain that it _is_ true? You see, once we make this announcement it is then too late. We cannot contradict it afterwards and say that we have made a mistake. It is irrevocable. ISOBEL (_hardly able to believe it_). Are you suggesting that we should—hush it up? WILLIAM. Now you are putting words into my mouth that I have not yet used. I say that it has occurred to me, thinking things over very earnestly, that possibly we are in too much of a hurry to believe this story of—er—this Jenkins story. ISOBEL. You mean that I have invented it, dreamed it, imagined it——? WILLIAM. No, no, no, no, please. It would never occur to me to suggest any such thing. What I do suggest as a possibility worth considering is that Oliver Blayds—er—imagined it. ISOBEL. You mean he thought it was the other man’s poetry when it was really his own? WILLIAM. You must remember that he was a very old man. I was saying to Marion in this very room, talking over what I understood then to be his last wish for a simple funeral, that the dying words of an old man were not to be taken too seriously. Indeed, I used on that occasion this actual phrase, “An old man, his faculties rapidly going.” I repeat the phrase. I say again that an old man, his faculties rapidly going, may have imagined this story. In short, it has occurred to me that the whole thing may very well be—hallucination. ISOBEL (_looking at him fixedly_). Or self-deception. WILLIAM (_misunderstanding her_). Exactly. Well, in short, I suggest there never was anybody called Jenkins. ISOBEL (_brightly—after a pause_). Wouldn’t it be nice? WILLIAM. One can understand how upon his death-bed a man feels the need of confession, of forgiveness and absolution. It may well be that Oliver Blayds, instinctively feeling this need, bared his soul to you, not of some real misdeed of his own, but of some imaginary misdeed with which, by who knows what association of ideas, his mind had become occupied. ISOBEL. You mean he meant to confess to a murder or something, and got muddled. WILLIAM. Heaven forbid that I should attribute any misdeed to so noble, so knightly a man as Oliver Blayds. ISOBEL. Knightly? WILLIAM. I am of course assuming that this man Jenkins never existed. ISOBEL. Oh, you _are_ assuming that? WILLIAM. The more I think of it, the more plain it becomes to me that we _must_ assume it. ISOBEL. Yes, I quite see that the more one thinks of it, the more—— (_She indicates the rest of the sentence with her fingers._) WILLIAM. Well, what do you think of the suggestion? ISOBEL. It’s so obvious that I’m wondering why it didn’t occur to you before. WILLIAM. The truth is I was stunned. ISOBEL. Oh yes. WILLIAM. And then, I confess, the fact of the 1863 volume seemed for the moment conclusive. ISOBEL. But now it doesn’t? WILLIAM. I explain it now, as one always explained it when he was alive. Every great poet has these lapses.