"I am not sure. It seemed to get mixed with my name—on my arm. I think it was only because tennis and Fenwick are a little alike." His companion thought how near the edge of a volcano both were, and resolved to try a crucial experiment. Better an eruption, after all, or a plunge in the crater, than a life of incessant doubt.
"You remembered the name Algernon clearly?"
"Not clearly. But it was the only name with an 'A' that felt right. Unless it was Arthur, but I'm sure my name never was Arthur!"
"Sally thought it was hypnotic suggestion—thought I had laid an unfair stress upon it. I easily might have."
"Why? Did you know an Algernon?"
"My husband's name was Algernon." She herself wondered how any voice that spoke so near a heart that beat as hers did at this moment could keep its secret. Yet it betrayed nothing, and so supreme was her self-control that she could say to herself, even while she knew she would pay for this effort later, that the pallor of her face would betray nothing either; he would put that down to the moonlight. She was a strong woman. For she went steadily on, to convince herself of her own self-command: "I knew him very little by that name, though. I always called him Gerry."
He merely repeated the name thrice, but it gave her a moment of keen apprehension. Any stirring of memory over it might be the thin end of a very big wedge. But if there was any, it was an end so thin that it broke off. Fenwick looked round at her.
"Do you know," he said, "I rather favour the hypnotic suggestion theory. For the moment you said the name Gerry, I fancied I
too knew it as the short for Algernon. Now, that's absurd! No two people ever made Gerry out of Algernon. It's always Algy."
"Always. Certainly, it would be odd."