“Yes. We went to a great many places. He was in the army then.”
“When you first met him?”
“Yes.” Her first tone of confident assertion changed almost as she uttered it to one of puzzled doubt. “Yes—I—I think so—I really forget.” She smiled in self-apology. “I have a very bad memory, you see, mein Herr,” she said, as if in explanation. “Doctor Breidenbach is treating me for it.”
“Ah?—Doubtless he is doing you a great deal of good?” Chassaigne seated himself upon the edge of the table and smiled down upon her in paternal benevolence.
“Oh, yes,” she began, impulsively. “You see, we are going to be married. But Doctor Breidenbach thinks it would not be right to be married until my memory is perfectly restored. So”—she hesitated, then smiled up with an innocent naïveté—“so you see I am doing all I can to concentrate and—and get it right.”
“Mon Dieu!” groaned Vincent in a low tone of anguish, turning away and staring out of the window.
Chassaigne frowned admonition at him in a quick glance unperceived by the young woman. Unobtrusively, he put one hand behind him, picked up the revolving-mirror from the table, held it behind his back. He nodded assent to her little self-revelation.
“Of course. No doubt you are making very rapid progress. Doctor Breidenbach is a very clever man, is he not?”
“Oh, yes—very clever. And so kind!”