"I know you did. But Louise"—he hesitated, half contrite in advance, for what he was going to say—"it might have been better if you hadn't told me—everything, I mean. Yes, I believe it's better not to know."
She did not reply, as she might have done, that she had forewarned him, afraid of this. She looked away, so that she should not be obliged to see him.
Another day, when they were walking in the ROSENTAL, she made him extremely unhappy by disagreeing with him.
"If one could just take a sponge and wipe the past out, like figures from a slate!" he said moodily.
But, jaded by his persistency, Louise would not admit it. "We should have nothing to remember."
"That's just it."
"But it belongs to us!" She was roused to protest by the under-meaning in his words. "It's as much a part of ourselves as our thoughts are—or our hands."
"One is glad to forget. You would be, Louise? You wouldn't care if your past were gone? Say you wouldn't."
But she only threw him a dark side-glance. As, however, he would not rest content, she flung out her hands with an impatient gesture. "How CAN you torment yourself so! If you insist on knowing, well, then, I wouldn't part with an hour of what's gone—not an hour! And you know it."
She caught at a few vivid leaves that had remained hanging on a bare branch, and carried them with her.