all?"
"They're gone like the tick of a second. Less than that, for even the tick of a single second can remain in your memory if you try hard enough. They're gone as though they never were."
"Maybe if we get a doctor--"
"No doctor can bring them back. They happeried to -me-, not to him."
"I've read about cases like this before," she tried to reassure him. "Amnesia, I think they call it. Somewhere between home and your work after you left me that last morning, something must have happened to you, some accident, some blow, just like what happened to you tonight on Tillary Street. Maybe a wild baseball thrown by some boys hit you on the head. Whatever it was, you picked yourself up, outwardly unhurt--and you didn't know who you were any more, forgot where you were going, forgot to come back home to me. And none of the people around you, that saw it happen, were any the wiser. Your suit had just come back from the cleaner's that morning. You left in kind of a hurry, without taking time to transfer most of the personal trifles you usually carried around in your pockets from the old one to the new one. Any one of them--an address on an old envelope, a receipted bill--would have helped you. But without them you were cut off completely."
Then, presently, she said, "Frank, you're back now. That's all that counts. Let's forget about it."
He felt less starkly frightened, as the hours wore on and they talked it over. Deep down within him he was still greatly troubled, far more troubled than she. That was natural. It was his identity that had been lost, not hers. She had him back, for her the mystery was solved. For him it was still impenetrable, yawning behind him like an abyss seen from a safely regained, sunlit ledge. One misstep, and--
In the still of that night, long after they'd put out the lights and lay quiet in the darkened room, he suddenly started upright, cold sweat needling his forehead. "Virginia, I'm scared! Put on the lights, I'm frightened of the dark! Where was I? -Who- was I, all that time?"
2
He had his old job back. Or at least, another with the same employers. In the weeks immediately following his disappearance, she had told them, in answer to their repeated inquiries, that he had suffered a nervous breakdown, had had to go away for a rest. Pride had made her do that. She couldn't bear to have anyone think she didn't know where he was, what had become of him. So now, when he had presented himself down there once more, room had been made for him with the fewest possible questions asked, and those wholly of a sympathetic nature. That had made it much less embarrassing.
The old familiar routine was beginning to reclaim his daily life. The blank was beginning to recede more and more into the past. He was even daring to hope that perhaps, at some not too future date, it would become one of those dimly remembered, never-mentioned things that two people share in common but never speak about.
The days were growing longer, and he emerged onto a street still bright with setting sunlight as he left his place of work. He bought a paper at the corner stand to take home with him, then hurried to his usual place for boarding the bus, joining the one or two others who were already standing there.
He spread his paper and began scanning it while he was waiting there. Held that way, it shielded the lower part of his face, although he wasn't thinking of that.
He had been standing there perhaps two minutes--the bus was evidently a little behind schedule--when something made his eyelids twitch and he raised them, It was that feeling of being looked at intently.
There was a man about to pass him in the crowd streaming along the sidewalk. Townsend's suddenly revealed face had caught his vacant attention just as it peered over the paper. The roving glance became a fixed stare. The fixed stare became a searching scrutiny.
The starer broke his headlong stride. He took a
"They're gone like the tick of a second. Less than that, for even the tick of a single second can remain in your memory if you try hard enough. They're gone as though they never were."
"Maybe if we get a doctor--"
"No doctor can bring them back. They happeried to -me-, not to him."
"I've read about cases like this before," she tried to reassure him. "Amnesia, I think they call it. Somewhere between home and your work after you left me that last morning, something must have happened to you, some accident, some blow, just like what happened to you tonight on Tillary Street. Maybe a wild baseball thrown by some boys hit you on the head. Whatever it was, you picked yourself up, outwardly unhurt--and you didn't know who you were any more, forgot where you were going, forgot to come back home to me. And none of the people around you, that saw it happen, were any the wiser. Your suit had just come back from the cleaner's that morning. You left in kind of a hurry, without taking time to transfer most of the personal trifles you usually carried around in your pockets from the old one to the new one. Any one of them--an address on an old envelope, a receipted bill--would have helped you. But without them you were cut off completely."
Then, presently, she said, "Frank, you're back now. That's all that counts. Let's forget about it."
He felt less starkly frightened, as the hours wore on and they talked it over. Deep down within him he was still greatly troubled, far more troubled than she. That was natural. It was his identity that had been lost, not hers. She had him back, for her the mystery was solved. For him it was still impenetrable, yawning behind him like an abyss seen from a safely regained, sunlit ledge. One misstep, and--
In the still of that night, long after they'd put out the lights and lay quiet in the darkened room, he suddenly started upright, cold sweat needling his forehead. "Virginia, I'm scared! Put on the lights, I'm frightened of the dark! Where was I? -Who- was I, all that time?"
2
He had his old job back. Or at least, another with the same employers. In the weeks immediately following his disappearance, she had told them, in answer to their repeated inquiries, that he had suffered a nervous breakdown, had had to go away for a rest. Pride had made her do that. She couldn't bear to have anyone think she didn't know where he was, what had become of him. So now, when he had presented himself down there once more, room had been made for him with the fewest possible questions asked, and those wholly of a sympathetic nature. That had made it much less embarrassing.
The old familiar routine was beginning to reclaim his daily life. The blank was beginning to recede more and more into the past. He was even daring to hope that perhaps, at some not too future date, it would become one of those dimly remembered, never-mentioned things that two people share in common but never speak about.
The days were growing longer, and he emerged onto a street still bright with setting sunlight as he left his place of work. He bought a paper at the corner stand to take home with him, then hurried to his usual place for boarding the bus, joining the one or two others who were already standing there.
He spread his paper and began scanning it while he was waiting there. Held that way, it shielded the lower part of his face, although he wasn't thinking of that.
He had been standing there perhaps two minutes--the bus was evidently a little behind schedule--when something made his eyelids twitch and he raised them, It was that feeling of being looked at intently.
There was a man about to pass him in the crowd streaming along the sidewalk. Townsend's suddenly revealed face had caught his vacant attention just as it peered over the paper. The roving glance became a fixed stare. The fixed stare became a searching scrutiny.
The starer broke his headlong stride. He took a
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