Had all men, he wondered, this secret chapter in their lives--the one sore place so impossible to forget, the cupboard of shadows never wholly closed, shadows which at any moment might steal out and encompass his darkening life?
He sat there motionless, and his thoughts travelled backwards.

There were many things in his life which he had forgotten, but never this.

Every word that had been spoken, every detail in that tragic little scene seemed to glide into his memory with a distinctness and amplitude which time had never for one second dimmed.

So it must be until the end.

He forgot the girl and her errand.