“Yes, I feel well—as well as I ever feel when I almost remember something terrible and never quite do. Oh, I hope I never shall quite remember. I think I should die if I did.”
Sylvia stared at her. Rose's face was fairly convulsed. Sylvia rose and hesitated a moment, then she stepped close to the girl and pulled the fair head to her lean shoulder. “Don't; you mustn't take on so,” she said. “Don't try to remember anything if it makes you feel like that. You'll be down sick.”
“I am trying not to remember, and always the awful dread lest I shall comes over me,” sobbed the girl. “Mr. McAllister says not to try to remember, too, but I am so horribly afraid that I shall try in spite of me. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela don't know anything about it. I never said anything about it to them. I did once to Mr. McAllister, and I did to Cousin Eliza, and she said not to try, and now I am telling you, I suppose because you are related to me. It came over me all of a sudden.”
Rose sobbed again. Sylvia smoothed her hair, then she shook her by the slender, soft shoulders, and again that overpowering delight seized her. “Come, now,” she said, “don't you cry another minute. You get up and lay your underclothes away in the bureau drawers. It's almost time to get supper, and I can't spend much more time here.”
Rose obeyed. She packed away piles of laced and embroidered things in the bureau drawers, and under Sylvia's directions hung up her gowns in the closet. As she did this she volunteered further information.
“I do remember one thing,” she said, with a shudder, “and I always know if I could remember back of that the dreadful thing would come to me.” She paused for a moment, then she said, in a shocked voice: “Mrs. Whitman.”
“What is it?”
“I really do remember that I was in a hospital once when I was little. I remember the nurses and the little white beds. That was not dreadful at all. Everybody petted me, but that was when the trying not to remember began.”
“Don't you think of it another minute,” Sylvia said, sternly.
“I won't; I won't, really. I—”