They prattled:
"The rooms, when we were little and they were so big—"
"It was easier to walk there than anywhere else."
To hear the children talk, you would have thought there was something benevolent and invisible, something like the good God of the past, behind those walls. She hummed an air she had heard there, and said that music was easier to remember than people. They dropped back into the past easily and naturally. They wrapped themselves up in their memories as though they were cold.
"The other day, just before we left, I took a candle and walked alone through the rooms, which scarcely woke up to watch me pass."
In the garden, so prim and well kept, they thought only of the flowers, and little else. They saw the pool, the shady walk, and the cherry tree, which, in winter when the lawn was white, they made believe had too many blossoms—snow blossoms.
The day before they had still been in the garden, like brother and sister. Now life seemed to have grown serious all at once, and they no longer knew how to play. I saw that they wanted to kill the past. When we are old, we let it die; when we are young and strong, we kill it.
She sat up straight.
"I don't want to remember any more," she said.
And he: