“Why, of course. You don’t suppose I would allow a gift of yours to fade into a memory?”
“But it will fade,” she insisted, “in spite of your efforts. All these pleasant things fade so swiftly.”
He turned more directly towards her and looked into her eyes. She had taken off her hat, and sat with her shoulders against the tree and looked steadily back at him.
“Yes,” he admitted; “that’s uncomfortably true. But something remains.”
“Something?” Her eyes questioned him, wide childlike eyes with a hint of womanhood lurking in their blue depths. He drew a little nearer to her.
“Something,” he repeated—“subtle, intangible—an emotion, a memory... Call it what you will... Some recurring brightness which is to the human soul what the sunlight is to the earth—a thousand harmonies spring from the one source. My primrose will fade, but for me it can’t die; nor will the kind hand that gathered it and placed it where it is be forgotten either. There are things one doesn’t forget.”
“I suppose there are,” acquiesced Prudence, her thoughts by some odd twist reverting to William’s table manners. “Sometimes one would like to forget.”
“I shouldn’t,” he averred—“not this, at least.”
She roused herself with a laugh.
“I was thinking of other things—I don’t know why—horrid things. Are you one of a large family?”