“Oh, sometimes. He was very patient. How dark the sky looks!”
Hortense smiled. She had a suspicion that she was no longer fumbling in the dark. She had touched the girl beneath her apathy and her reserve.
“Have you your father’s books—still?”
“They are in the library—covered with dust.”
“Why do you not keep the dust away by reading them. You could fancy yourself talking with him when you turned the pages he had turned.”
“Could I?”
Hortense became silent suddenly, her face turned with an expression of sadness toward the night.
“Of course. It is in our memories that we live again. The past may become a kind of religion to us.”
She did not look at the girl, but her brilliant and sensitive consciousness waited for impressions. Barbara remained motionless, with stolid, morose face.
“What clever things you think of!” she said, abruptly. “But the books are nearly all in Latin. I wish I had not eaten so much supper. It always makes me sleepy and stupid.”