REMEMBRANCE.
"Stop, Francesca," I cried. "Don't talk; don't budge; don't blink. Give me time. I've all but—"
"What are you up to?" she said.
"There," I said, "you've done it. I had it on the tip of my tongue, and now it has gone back for ever into the limbo of forgotten things, and all because you couldn't keep silent for the least little fraction of a second."
"My poor dear," she said, "I am sorry. But why didn't you tell me you were trying to remember something?"
"That," I said, "would have been just as fatal to it. These things are only remembered in an atmosphere of perfect silence. The mental effort must have room to develop."
"Don't tell me," she said tragically, "that I have checked the development of a mental effort. That would be too awful."
"Well," I said, "that's exactly what you have done, that and nothing less. I feel just as if I'd tried to go upstairs where there wasn't a step."