For he had recollected, look you, that at the time of that stone-throw into the rapids above Niagara he was a married man somehow separated from his wife. And the way that he knew this was that he could remember plainly that the reason he did not make an offer of marriage, there by the great torrent that was rushing to the Falls, to a French girl (whose name he got clearly) was that he did not know if his wife was dead or living. He did not know it now. The oddity of it was that, though he remembered clearly this incident hinging on the fact that he was then a married man, he could remember neither the wife he had married nor anything connected with her. He strove hard against this partial insight into his past, which seemed to him stranger than complete oblivion. But he soon convinced himself that a slight hazy vision he conjured up of a wedding years and years ago was only a reflex image—an automatic reaction—from his recent marriage. For did not the wraith of his present wife quietly take its place before the altar where by rights he should have been able to recall her predecessor? It was all confusion; no doubt of it.
But his mind had travelled quickly too; for when Rosalind looked in at his door he knew what he had to say, for her sake.
"Gerry darling, have you never been to bed?"
"For a bit, dearest. Then I found I couldn't sleep, and got up."
"Isn't it awful, the noise? One hears it so in this house.... Well,
I suppose it's the same in any house that looks straight over the sea."
"Haven't you slept?"
"Oh yes, a little. But then it woke me. Then I thought I heard you moving."
"So I was. Now, suppose we both go to bed, and try to sleep. I shall have to, because of my candle. Is that all you've got left?"
"That's all, and it's guttering. And the paper will catch directly." She blew it out to avoid this, and added: "Stop a minute and I'll take the paper off, and make it do for a bit."