“Some one is here to see you,” she said, ignoring the question.
David turned to Una. One would have said that he had not seen her before, although in her presence he betrayed a strange sort of agitation. Their eyes met. He took the hand she eagerly stretched out to him, then slowly relinquished it, perplexed, vaguely conscious of the other’s emotion.
“I’m certain I’ve seen her before,” he said, half jokingly, half in irritation, addressing Sajipona, “but I can’t remember when or where. For the life of me I can’t tell who she is. As for her name, I ought to know that——”
“Una! Una! Surely you remember, David?”
“David! But of course you told her my name, Sajipona. Did you tell her your pretty fancy, about the El Dorado, the Gilded Man?”
“Surely, you remember my name—Una?”
“Una—Una,” he repeated uneasily. “It sounds familiar—I’m sure I’ve heard it—but I can’t exactly place it. Strange! How perfectly familiar it is; yet, I can’t place it, I can’t place it! It’s a beautiful name—I’m sure I used to think so—and you are beautiful, too, Una!”
Her name, pronounced in the accents she loved so well, brought a flood of memories that, she felt, must thrill him too. And yet—there he stood before her, the David she had always known, but now subtly changed, troubled, unseeing. Amazement robbed her of words. He had forgotten her. To Sajipona, however, more keenly observant even than Una, it was evident that an undercurrent of recognition on the part of David was hopelessly held in check by sheer inability to remember. His manner, moreover, indicated a mental uneasiness, pain, that could not fail to excite sympathy.
“When you left us at Honda,” began Una, “we expected to follow right after. Then we heard you had disappeared——”
Laughing mirthlessly, David placed both hands to his head in hopeless bewilderment.