"And you have no excuse for not doing so. For I am sure that what I did say was as clear as daylight."
"Exactly. It is perfectly true that, when we went to Grosvenor Square in June, Tim said nothing about recovery. In fact, as I remember it—only eighteen years is a longish time, you know, to recollect things—he was regularly down in the mouth about the whole concern. I always believed, myself, that he would sooner have had Adrian for Gwen, on any terms, by that time—sooner than she should marry the Hapsburg, certainly. Not that he believed that Gwen was going to cave out!"
"You never said he said that!"
"Because he didn't. He only cautioned me particularly against believing the rubbish that got into the newspapers. I am sure that if he had said anything then about recovery, I should remember it now."
"I suppose you would."
"And then six weeks after that Gwen came tearing home by herself from Vienna. Then the next thing we heard was that he had recovered his eyesight, and they were to be married in the autumn."
This was at the entrance to the tunnel, on the way to the Hippopotamus. One's voice echoes in this tunnel, and that may have been the reason the conversation paused. Or it may have been that resonance suggests publicity, and this was a private story. Or possibly, no more than mere cogitative silence of the parties. Anyhow, they had emerged into the upper world before either spoke again.
Then said the lady:—"It seems that it comes to the same thing, whichever way we put it. Something happened."
"My dear," replied the gentleman, "you ought to have been on the Bench. You have the summing-up faculty in the highest degree. Something happened that did not, as the phrase is, come out. But what was it?—that's the point! I believe we shall die without knowing."
"We certainly shall," said Mrs. Percival Pellew—for why should the story conceal her identity? "We certainly shall, if we go over and over and over it, and never get an inch nearer. You know, my dear, if we have talked it over once, we have talked it over five hundred times, and no one is a penny the wiser. You are so vague. What was it I began by saying?"