"You're very good—but what am I being kept here for? I say!—I hope Polly Anne's all right...."
"Please don't pull at that bandage; it shall be taken off as soon as the nurse comes back. Why shouldn't 'Polly Anne' be all right?" She couldn't help the inverted commas.
"Because she hasn't come. Did you send to the address I gave?"
Judith replied stonily, "Your wife is here. She will come directly.... Listen! Do you not know me?" For she knew how short their time must be; how brief and abrupt the farewell that had to be packed into it, whatever form it might take. She did not certainly know whether she hoped he would say "Yes."
He kept her waiting, to turn his eyes full on her and consider the point. "N-n-n-no!" said he, prolonging the first letter. "I don't think I do." His civil manner was heart-rending to the woman beside him. Recollect that only three days before, though they would not have become de facto man and wife, their compact of marriage would have been irrevocable! He kept his eyes still on her with a puzzled look, adding immediately after, "Could you not tell me of something to remind me?"
What to remind him of, and avoid all claim of tender memory for the past, in view of the fact that he might disallow that past altogether!—that was Judith's difficulty. She must keep to suggestions prosaic and bald—just the colourless events of daily life. She tried to speak with absolute calm indifference, tempered by good-will.
"Is it possible you do not remember this room—the room the German Baroness saw the ghost in?" She made a not too successful attempt at a laugh over this. "Why!—you slept here before!"
"Where is 'here'?"
"My father's house, Royd Hall. I am Judith Arkroyd."
Challis's voice and manner were like his old self again as he answered, "I do feel so out of it!" and laughed a sort of apology. "I'm horribly ashamed. I shall have to ask Polly Anne to jog my memory. Is she coming?"