'How did you hear about--it?' I asked.

'When I first met you, or soon after, a friend of yours--we
happened to be talking about you--told me that you had been engaged
to be married to a girl named Audrey Blake. He was to have been
your best man, he said, but one day you wrote and told him there
would be no wedding, and then you disappeared; and nobody saw you
again for three years.'

'Yes,' I said: 'that is all quite true.'

'It seems to have been a serious affair, Peter. I mean--the sort
of thing a man would find it hard to forget.'

I tried to smile, but I knew that I was not doing it well. It was
hurting me extraordinarily, this discussion of Audrey.

'A man would find it almost impossible,' I said, 'unless he had a
remarkably poor memory.'

'I didn't mean that. You know what I mean by forget.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I do.'

She came quickly to me and took me by the shoulders, looking into
my face.

'Peter, can you honestly say you have forgotten her--in the sense
I mean?'