"Unless what?"
"Unless the well-being of some others, forgotten with my forgotten world, is involved in—dependent on—my return to it. That would be shocking—the hungry nestlings in the deserted nest. But I am so convinced that I have only forgotten a restless life of rapid change—that I could not forget love and home, if I ever had them—that my misgivings about this are misgivings of the reason only, not of the heart. Do you understand me?"
"Perfectly. At least, I think so. Go on."
"I cannot help thinking, too, that a sense of a strong link with a forgotten yesterday would survive the complete effacement of all its details in the form of a wish to return to it. I have none. My to-day is too happy for me to wish to go back to that yesterday, even if I could, without a wrench. I feel a sort of shame in saying I should be sorry to return to it. It seems a sort of ... a sort of disloyalty to the unknown."
"You might long to be back, if you could know. Think if you could see before you now, and recognise the woman who was once your wife." There was nettle-grasping in this.
"It is a mere abstract idea," he replied, "unaccompanied by any image of an individual. I perceive that it is dutiful to recognise the fact that I should welcome her if she appeared as a reality. But it is a large if. I am content to go on without an hypothesis—that is really all she is now. And my belief that, if
she had ever existed, I should not be able to disbelieve in her, underlies my acceptance of her in that character."
Mrs. Nightingale laughed. "We are mighty metaphysical," said she. "Wouldn't it depend entirely on what she was like, when all's said and done? I believe I'm right. We women are more practical than men, after all."
"You make game of my metaphysics, as you call them. Well, I'll drop the metaphysics and speak the honest truth." He stopped and faced round towards her, standing on the garden path. "Only, you must make me one promise."
She stopped also, and stood looking full at him.