'No, I'm at a loose end just now. If you like, I'll help you to get some other clothes, and then you'll feel more comfortable.'
'It would be awfully good of you if you would.'
Two hours later, he sat with me in the dining-room of a hotel which faced The Hoe. His nondescript garments were discarded, and he was now clothed in decent British attire. That he had a good upbringing, and was accustomed to the polite forms of society, was more than ever evidenced while we were together at the hotel. There was no suggestion of awkwardness in his movements, and everything he did betrayed the fact that he had been accustomed to the habits and associations of an English gentleman.
After dinner, we went for a walk on The Hoe.
'It would be really ever so much easier to talk to you,' I said with a laugh, 'if you had a name. Have you no remembrance of what you were called?'
'Not the slightest. In a vague way I know I am an Englishman, and that's about all. Months ago I seemed to awake out of a deep sleep, and I realized that I was in India. By a kind of intuition, I found my way to Bombay, and hearing that a boat was immediately starting for England, I came by it. It was by the merest chance that I was able to come. I had walked a good way, and was foot-sore. I had a bathe in a pond by the roadside, and on examining a pocket inside my vest I found several £5 notes.'
'And you knew their value?' I asked.
'Oh, yes, perfectly,' he replied.
'Did you not realize that they might not belong to you?'
'No, I was perfectly sure that they belonged to me, and that I had put them there before I lost my memory, I can't give you any reason for this, but I know it was so. I have just another remembrance,' he added, and he shuddered as he spoke.