Her waiting eyes recalled him from his inquiry, and with an effort he answered, “Yes, I think you do have your being here and now, Miss Gerald, to an unusual degree.”
“And you don’t think that is wrong?”
“Wrong? Why? How?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She looked round, and her eye fell upon her father waiting for them in his carriage beside the walk. The sight supplied her with the notion which Lanfear perceived would not have occurred otherwise. “Then why doesn’t papa want me to remember things?”
“I don’t know,” Lanfear temporized. “Doesn’t he?”
“I can’t always tell. Should—should you wish me to remember more than I do?”
“I?”
She looked at him with entreaty. “Do you think it would make my father happier if I did?”
“That I can’t say,” Lanfear answered. “People are often the sadder for what they remember. If I were your father—Excuse me! I don’t mean anything so absurd. But in his place—”
He stopped, and she said, as if she were satisfied with his broken reply: “It is very curious. When I look at him—when I am with him—I know him; but when he is away, I don’t remember him.” She seemed rather interested in the fact than distressed by it; she even smiled.