"It does seem strange; but then, you know she's mentally undeveloped. In some ways she's a mere child. And then, too, she has never known it to be any different—why should she suspect that there is another personality—that she isn't the real Joy Fielding? She's conscious that she loses time, so to speak, and she thinks it is only the fault of her memory."
I thought it over a while. Then I said: "She wouldn't say much about it to me, and so I didn't quite get her point of view. It baffles me. She must know that she does things in the lapses, even if she doesn't recall them."
"I don't know that she's even aware of that. She may think that she's unconscious, during these lapses, but most likely it is just like dreams. Even if we vaguely remember them, for a moment, we forget them, and they don't seem to have been real—or, perhaps, they're like delirium, or insane intervals, of which she has no memory. Why, a man may even be simply drunk, and not recall what he has done, and that self is, really, a different personality."
"But," I pursued, "do you forget, too?"
"Yes. That is, almost always. At times I have had vague formless memories, as one has of dreams—that's about as much as this second life ever is associated with my normal one—if what I now have is the normal—how do I know even that? But I have known about the duality almost from the first, and of course Leah keeps me informed of everything that happens. You see, sometimes I'm not even aware that there has been a lapse—I don't realize that it isn't just the next day. Leah tells her as little as possible about me. She's easily managed and put off, usually, but somehow of late she seems to have grown stronger. She seems to be developing mentally. It frightens me a little."
"You don't think that anybody has told her, possibly?" I suggested.
"There's nobody to tell her. Of course Leah never would."
"Uncle Jerdon?"
"Oh, he thinks I'm crazy, and he never talks, anyway, I'm sure. He doesn't realize what's happening, for, after all, we're not obviously different; she might be taken for me in some queer mood, I mean," she added.
"King?"