“Nor do you,” said she.
“Because gardening isn’t my plan. Hang it all, I’ve had a plan now for twenty-four hours. I am in the first head of missionary enterprise.”
The blinds were not quite drawn down yet; once again she had to peer into the night.
“That is a fair question,” she said. “I answer that you don’t yet know, and I hope you may never know, how great a task it is to forget. There are years of my life which need to be forgotten before I could begin to live again. That has occupied me very completely. Forgiveness, I think, is included in that; to forget implies it.”
Hugh stared a moment.
“Why, in ‘Gambits’——” he began.
“Yes, I remember it was phrased like that in the play. Amherst said that death would mean forgetting, and therefore forgiving. It seemed to me very true. But I have not the slightest intention of committing suicide.”
She got up as she spoke, but Hugh from the ground was standing before she had risen from her seat.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I did not mean——”
“Ah, no, I know that! But even if you had meant it, why not? For a great point of forgetting is that any allusion—though you did not allude—cannot hurt one. Besides——”