But I thought a great deal about this matter: I had known Summer for
seven years and she had been a woman when I first saw her. Yet her
youthful appearance now made it impossible that she should have been
adult then. Surely my memory did not play me wrong in picturing the
Summer Storm I had seen that night in the park; indeed, the picture of
her was burned indelibly on my mind. She must have, in the interim,
become slighter, even smaller.
Oddly, this slenderizing process, once I noticed it, seemed reluctant
to stop. The bathroom scales proved that she was losing weight slowly,
but in her appearance the decline progressed much more rapidly.
She began to get leggy and angular and she completely lost the
once-voluptuous contours of her body, despite all the milk and starchy
foods I could feed her. Nor was it that she lost appetite. She ate
voraciously.
At the same time, I became convinced she was losing her memory. Chance
remarks dropped at odd times indicated that her recollection of Wyn, of
the events before Mark's birth, of all her past life in Allertown, was
extremely faulty; she never had shown signs of remembering any events
before she came to Allertown.
As a matter of fact, it became increasingly apparent that she no
longer accepted Mark as her son. The boy was growing out of babyhood
with that speed which is so remarkable in children. She cared for him
solicitously, but seemed to look on him as her little brother.
Of course, I took her to Doctor Lodge. He, in turn, went with us to
consult doctors at Mayer City. He could find nothing wrong with Summer
physically, nor could they.
They seemed to think we were faking. They heard my assurances, and
those of Doctor Lodge, that Summer must be approaching the age of
thirty, with obvious skepticism.
"There is nothing wrong with this girl except an unfortunate emotional
aberration," one doctor told me flatly. "Physiologically she is a girl
of about fourteen, and it is difficult for me to believe that her
chronological age is any higher."
"As I told you before, she has a son nearly four years old," I said.
"I don't say that's impossible at her age, for it isn't," he retorted.
"But this girl has never been a mother. She's a virgin."
I should have realized what all this meant. I believe there have been
such cases in medical history before. But I suppose I was too close to
it. I didn't understand, even when Summer reposed childish confidence
in me.
"I know what's going to happen, you know, because it's already happened
to me," she said. She was a skinny girl now, with enormous blue eyes.
"You know what's happened, because it's already happened to you. Isn't
it funny?"
Fortunately, Wyn returned not long after that. Wyn had the answer to
the questions that had been puzzling me.
* * * * *
Wyn gave no warning of his return. He just walked into the house one
afternoon, carrying a suitcase and smoking a pipe.
When I found Wyn and Summer in the park, they had appeared to be twins.
During Wyn's absence his hair had begun to gray--prematurely, I'm
sure--and now he looked like Summer's father. The change in her must
have been even more noticeable to him than it was to me, because he had
been separated from her during its most remarkable development. But he
showed no surprise at it.
"I knew what the trouble was before I left," he said soberly. "You see,
as Summer's husband I was much closer to her than you could be, even
since she and the boy have been living with you."