emembrance by which his own
personality supported itself, why should not it pass so through eternity
without that loss of identity which was equivalent to annihilation?

Her waiting eyes recalled him from his inquiry, and with an effort he
answered, "Yes, I think you do have your being here and now, Miss
Gerald, to an unusual degree."

"And you don't think that is wrong?"

"Wrong? Why? How?"

"Oh, I don't know." She looked round, and her eye fell upon her father
waiting for them in his carriage beside the walk. The sight supplied her
with the notion which Lanfear perceived would not have occurred
otherwise. "Then why doesn't papa want me to remember things?"

"I don't know," Lanfear temporized. "Doesn't he?"

"I can't always tell. Should--should _you_ wish me to remember more than
I do?"

"I?"

She looked at him with entreaty. "Do you think it would make my father
happier if I did?"

"That I can't say," Lanfear answered. "People are often the sadder for
what they remember. If I were your father--Excuse me! I don't mean
anything so absurd. But in his place--"

He stopped, and she said, as if she were satisfied with his broken
reply: "It is very curious. When I look at him--when I am with him--I
know him; but when he is away, I don't remember him." She seemed rather
interested in the fact than distressed by it; she even smiled.

"And me," he ventured, "is it the same with regard to me?"

She did not say; she asked, smiling: "Do you remember me when I am
away?"

"Yes!" he answered. "As perfectly as if you were with me. I can see you,
hear you, feel the touch of your hand, your dress--Good heavens!" he
added to himself under his breath. "What am I saying to this poor
child!"

In the instinct of escaping from himself he started forward, and she
moved with him. Mr. Gerald's watchful driver followed them with the
carriage.

"That is very strange," she said, lightly. "Is it so with you about
everyone?"

"No," he replied, briefly, almost harshly. He asked, abruptly: "Miss
Gerald, are there any times when you know people in their absence?"

"Just after I wake from a nap--yes. But it doesn't last. That is, it
seems to me it doesn't. I'm not sure."

As they followed the winding of the pleasant way, with the villas on the
slopes above and on the slopes below, she began to talk of them, and to
come into that knowledge of each which formed her remembrance of them
from former knowledge of them, but which he kne