The dark tangle, that for the hundredth time I was trying to unravel, is almost impossible of statement, so little of the solid was there to support it, such mazes of spiritual conjecture did it open up. Once more I will do the best I can with it. Understand, to begin with, that he had now repeated what I had better call the "experience of the flash-lamp." Formerly it had been Julia; now it was Jennie. Therefore this, if anything, seemed to follow:
| THAT OTHER TIME | THIS TIME |
|---|---|
| Julia ... | Jennie ... |
| The approach of the lamp ... | The approach of the lamp ... |
| He had been greatly loved. | He was greatly loved. |
| He had not loved. | She was his very heart. |
| He had remembered nothing. | I knew nothing whatever about it. |
| But he had woke up younger by eleven years. | I knew nothing whatever about it. |
| Had ended in fluctuations of his "B" memory. | I knew nothing whatever about it. |
| But, save for that "flash-lamp" gap, his "A" memory had been unimpaired. | I knew nothing whatever about it. |
| He had therefore attained a duality of (approximately) eighteen and forty-five. | I knew nothing whatever about it. |
| But did he still retain it? | It was precisely that that I wanted to know. |
In other words, the problem that had confronted me when he had disappeared from his rooms in Cambridge Circus, when he had left Trenchard's rooms in South Kensington and had got to France by swimming the Channel, leaped upon me again on the ramparts of that ancient French town.
How old was he now?
But no, I have not finished yet. Let us take it a little further. The state of his memory at this point was a matter of the most urgent importance, since I now began to suspect that the whole of his chance of again going forward turned on it. So we now had:
| Julia had taken his sin, but not his memory of it, since he had cried out upon my cowardice in speaking of it at Le Port gap. | His cry had been immediately followed by an aching cry for help and advice. |
| He had subsequently repeated a page from his book. | He had vowed that books had never in the least interested him. |
| I had particularly questioned him about his memory. | I had not had an opportunity of questioning him. |
| He had promised to take no step without my knowledge. | He had taken a step without my knowledge. |
| I did not think that he would knowingly break his word to me. | He had broken it. |
Do you see whither it leads? You do; but let me state it as it struck me, sitting there watching the shirley poppies in the east with St Sauveur dark among the limes behind me.
When you or I forget a thing our forgetting does not mean that that thing never was. Would to God it sometimes did! But you and I do not live backwards through our years, and we are dealing now with a man who did. Suppose, then, that this "A" memory were to go the way of his "B" one? And suppose in addition that, instead of merely resting on an even keel, he should presently begin to forge ahead again? In that case he would once more be advancing on the unknown. His future to him would be what your future is to you, mine to me. And it is a condition of a future's being a future that it shall not already have been. What other future than that is there? There was no man living, Derwent Rose or anybody else, who had not a future. And when a thing has not been it has not been, and there is the end of it. He was, quite simply, and exactly as you once were, exactly as I once was, young with a single age again. With the disappearance of his last "A" recollection, past time itself was abolished. For him forty-five was not, and never had been.
And gone already was his memory of at least one event of hardly a week ago, namely, his promise to me. Nay, that must have gone before ever they fled, for nothing would have been easier for him than to send me a note demanding his release from his word. But gone how, and when? Remember, my own last actual sight of him had been by Fréhel's Light when we had stood by the Crucifix that overlooks St Briac harbour. My last direct word from him had been that note that Jennie had brought, in which he had reassured me that he was to be trusted, at any rate till I was out and about again. And my last news of him of any kind prior to their flight was that he had sat with Jennie among the sarrasin sheaves. Therefore whatever had happened had happened during the few days between his writing his note and Noble's discovery of them and speeding to Ker Annic with the tale.
I counted these days one by one.