Vereker was completely at a loss—began to be a little afraid his companion's brain might be giving way. "How can you tell that," said he, "unless you know who she ought to have been?"
Fenwick resumed his walk, and when he replied did so in a voice that had less tension in it, as though something less painful had touched his mind:
"It's rum, I grant you. But the whole thing is too rum to bear thinking of—at least, to bear talking about. As to the exact reason why I know it's not her, that's simple enough!"
"What is it?"
"Because Mrs. Fenwick gets out of the train—my Rosey, here, Sally's mother. And it's just the same with the only other approach to a memory that connects itself with it—a shadowy, indistinct ceremony, also in the heat, much more indistinct than the railway-station. My real wife's image—Rosey's, here—just takes the place at the altar where the other one should be, and prevents my getting at any recollection of her. It is the only thing that makes the dream bearable."
Vereker said nothing. He did not want to disturb any lull in the storm in his companion's mind. After a slight pause the latter continued:
"The way I account for it seems to me sufficient. I cannot conceive any woman being to me what ... or, perhaps I should express it better by saying I cannot connect the wife-idea with any image except hers. And, of course, the strong dominant idea displaces the feeble memory."
Vereker was ready with an unqualified assent at the moment. For though Sally, as we have seen, had taken him into her confidence the day after her mother's wedding—and, indeed, had talked over the matter many times with him since—the actual truth was far too strange to suggest itself offhand, as it would have
been doing had the doctor connected the fact that Sally's mother went out to India to be married with this meeting of two lovers at a simmering railway-station, name not known. The idea of the impossible per se is probably the one a finite intelligence most readily admits, and is always cordially welcome in intellectual difficulties—a universal resolution of logical discords. In the case of these two men, at that moment, neither was capable of knowing the actual truth had he been told it, whatever the evidence; still less of catching at slight connecting-links. Fenwick went on speaking:
"I don't know whether you will understand it—yes! I think, perhaps, you might—that it's a consolation to me this way Mrs. Fenwick comes in. It seems to bring fresh air into what else would be—ugh!" He shuddered a half-intentional shudder; then, dropping his voice, went on, speaking quickly: "The thing makes part of some tragedy—some sad story—something best forgotten! If I could only dare to hope I might remember no more—might even forget it altogether."