Josie was sorry to have her walk cut short but the man's courtesy was not to be gainsaid. She climbed up on the seat by him, thanking him frankly. She had seen him before, where, she could not remember.
"Are you in the army?" she asked.
"I suppose so," he answered whimsically.
"They tell me I am, but I can't remember ever getting in it. I can't remember anything, in fact. I remember how to read and how to speak French and some German and whenever I get hold of a book I have read before the plot comes back to me if it happens to be a novel, but my past life is a blank. If I could get some inkling of it I believe it would come back like the plot of the novels. I am as well as can be physically and the alienists say I am as sane as anyone, but I might have been born yesterday, for all I know of my life before I became conscious in a vile German prison camp.
"But I wonder why I tell you all this! It seems hardly fair to pick up a young lady on the road and take advantage of her helplessness to pour in her ear my own troubles."
"Oh, please, tell me! I am very much interested. Do you never have any remembrance of your former existence? Do not odors or sounds or sights bring some vague impression of yesterday?"
"Why—yes! Violets seem to mean more to me than other flowers. Why, I don't know—but I have a feeling that someone I must have loved and who loved me is in trouble. I can't get rid of the feeling. But if it is so—if anyone does love me why doesn't he or she find me? I'm here—not really lost. If I only could get some clue—a name—an address—something, anything on which to build."
He turned and looked at Josie. She met his gaze with a long wondering look.
"Stop the car, please, for a moment," she asked. He obeyed immediately.
"Mr. Waller," she said gently, "Don't you remember these little porridge bowls?"