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Between the Dark and the Daylight by William Dean Howells
page 33 of 181 (18%)

"Yes."

"Then it was _so_! I thought I had dreamed it. I was beginning to
remember something, and my father asked me what it was, and then I
couldn't remember. Do you believe I shall keep on remembering?"

"I don't see why you shouldn't."

"Should you wish me to?" she asked, in evident, however unconscious,
recurrence to their talk of the day before.

"Why not?"

She sighed. "I don't know. If it's like some of those dreams or gleams.
Is remembering pleasant?"

Lanfear thought for a moment. Then he said, in the honesty he thought
best to use with her: "For the most part I should say it was painful.
Life is tolerable enough while it passes, but when it is past, what
remains seems mostly to hurt and humiliate. I don't know why we should
remember so insistently the foolish things and wrong things we do, and
not recall the times when we acted, without an effort, wisely and
rightly." He thought he had gone too far, and he hedged a little. "I
don't mean that we _can't_ recall those times. We can and do, to console
and encourage ourselves; but they don't recur, without our willing, as
the others do."

She had poured herself a cup of coffee, and she played with the spoon in
her saucer while she seemed to listen. But she could not have been
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