“The bitter things remain, and with them—for contrast—the silliest trifles.”
He looked up at her with a brightening of the eyes.
“Yes; why, Heaven alone knows! I can remember kissing my mother when she lay dead. And with the same vividness I can remember a wooden horse I had as a boy, a gray horse with a brown saddle painted on his back, and his nostrils a gay scarlet. Whenever I see a horse I think of that wooden horse’s nose.”
Barbara gave a queer, short laugh, her face firing with sudden animation.
“That is just what life is. And sometimes we see the same thing again—afterward. I can call to mind looking into the window of a goldsmith’s shop, and seeing upon a little green board a short gold chain with a knot of pearls for a button. Why I should have noticed and remembered that one thing I can’t tell. But I saw its brother chain one night this summer.”
His eyes met hers, calm, steady, and unperturbed.
“Where?”
“On the cloak you wore that night.”
“A cloak?”
“Yes, at Hortense Mancini’s, when you came in wet with the rain. And I thought that one of the gold chains seemed missing.”