"No—must try it again. Why, do you think it bad for him to remember?"
"I don't know what to think."
"My notion is that a man has a right to his own mind. Anyhow, one has no right to keep him out of it."
"Oh no; besides, Gerry isn't out of it in this case. Not out of his mind...."
"I didn't mean that way. I meant excluded from participation in himself ... you see?"
"Oh yes, I quite understand. Now listen, doctor. I want you to do me a kindness. Say nothing, even to Sally, till I tell you. Say nothing!"
"You may trust me." Rosalind feels no doubt on that point, the more so that the little passage about Sally's name has landed her at some haven of the doctor's confidence that neither knows the name of just yet. He is not the first man that has felt a welcome in some trifling word of a very special daughter's mother. But woe be to the mother who is premature and spoils all! Poor Prosy is too far gone to be a risky subject of experiment. But he won't say anything—not he! "After all, you know," he continues, "it may all turn out a false alarm. Or false hope, should I say?"
No answer. And he doesn't press for one. He is in a land of pitfalls.
"What have you and your medical adviser been talking about all the while, there in mid-ocean?" Fenwick forgets the late event with pleasure. Sally, with her hair threatening to come down in the wind, is enough to stampede a troop of nightmares.