anybody can forget the past. It seems to me that I shall always remember why I did things, said things, and thought things. I should, if I lived a hundred years, I’m quite sure.  ”

“Perhaps you have a better memory than I,” answered Mrs. Bowring. “But I don’t think it is exactly a question of memory either. I can remember what I said, and did, and thought, well—twenty years ago. But it seems to me very strange that I should have thought, and spoken, and acted, just as I did. After all isn’t it natural? They tell us that our bodies are quite changed in less time than that.”

“Yes—but the soul does not change,” said Clare with conviction.

“The soul—”

Mrs. Bowring repeated the word, but said nothing more, and her still, blue eyes wandered from her daughter’s face and again fixed themselves on an imaginary point of the far southern distance.

“At least,” said Clare, “I was always taught so.”

She smiled again, rather coldly, as though admitting that such teaching might not be infallible after all.

“It is best to believe it,” said her mother quietly, but in a colourless voice. “Besides,” she added, with a change of tone, “I do believe it, you know. One is always the same, in the main things. It is the point of view that changes. The best picture in the world does not look the same in every light, does it?  ”

“No, I suppose not. You may like it in one light and not in another, and in one place and not in another.”

“Or at one time of life, and not at another,” added Mrs. Bowring, thoughtfully.

“I can’t imagine that.” Clare paused a moment. “Of course you are thinking of people,” she continued presently, with a little more animation. “One always means people, when one talks in that way. And that is what I cannot quite understand. It seems to me that if I liked people once I should always like them.”

Her mother looked at her.

“Yes—perhaps you would,” she said, and she relapsed into silence.

Clare’s colour did not change. No particular person was in her thoughts, and she had, as it were, given her own general and inexperienced opinion of her own character, quite honestly and without 

 Prev. P 8/145 next