If Helena is Datchery, the "assumption" or personation is in the
highest degree improbable, her whole bearing is quite out of her
possibilities, and the personation is very absurd.

Here the story ends.



THEORIES OF THE MYSTERY



FORSTER'S EVIDENCE


We have some external evidence as to Dickens's solution of his own
problem, from Forster. {2} On August 6, 1869, some weeks before he
began to work at his tale, Dickens, in a letter, told Forster, "I
have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not
communicable (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a
very strong one, though difficult to work." Forster must have
instantly asked that the incommunicable secret should be
communicated to HIM, for he tells us that "IMMEDIATELY AFTER I
learnt"--the secret. But did he learn it? Dickens was ill, and
his plot, whatever it may have been, would be irritatingly
criticized by Forster before it was fully thought out. "Fules and
bairns should not see half-done work," and Dickens may well have
felt that Forster should not see work not even begun, but merely
simmering in the author's own fancy.