"What were you saying to me in that horrid wood, my darling?" I asked her, when she was better.
"You are thinking about that? I was frightened, that is all, and when you are frightened you see ghosts."
"We shall be wood-cutters, shan't we?"
And kissing me, with a laugh, she replied: "It is bedtime, Jean of the Woods."
I well remember that walk, for it was our last. Often and often since, at sunset on a dark day, I have been over the same ground; often and often I have stopped where she stood, and stooped and pulled aside the fern, seeking to find, poor fool that I am! the traces of her vanished footsteps. And I have often halted in the clearing under the birches which rained down on us, and there in the shadow I have fancied I caught the flutter of her dress; I have thought I heard her startled note of fright. And on my way home at night, at every step I have found a recollection of her in the distant barking and the breaking branches, as in the trembling of her hand on my arm and the kiss which I gave her.
Once I went into the wood-hut. I saw it all as before,—the family, the smoky interior, the little bench on which we sat,—and I asked for something to drink, that I might see the glass her lips had touched.
"The little lady who makes such good omelettes, she isn't sick, for sure?" asked the old woman.
Probably she saw the tears in my eyes, for she said no more, and I came away.
And so it is that except in my heart, where she lives and is, all that was my darling grows faint and dark and dim.
It is the law of life, but it is a cruel law. Even my poor child is learning to forget, and when I say to him most unwillingly, "Baby dear, do you remember how your mother did this or that?" he answers "Yes"; but I see, alas! that he too is ceasing to remember.