"I know it from your face, your demeanor all the time, whatever you're
doing," he said.
"If you mean that I seem grave," she replied, with a faint smile, "it's
only my way. I've always been a serious person."
"But your gravity wasn't formerly tinged with sorrow; it had no touch of
brooding anxiety."
"How do you know?" she asked, wonderingly.
"I can see that your unhappiness is recent in its cause. Besides, I have
heard the cause mentioned." There was an odd expression for a moment on
his face, an odd wavering in his voice.
"Then you can't wonder that I'm unhappy, if you know the cause."
"But I can tell you that you oughtn't to be unhappy. No one ought to
be, when the cause belongs to the past,--unless there's reason for
self-reproach, and there's no such reason with you. We oughtn't to
carry the past along with us; we oughtn't to be ridden by it, oppressed
by it. We should put it where it belongs,--behind us. We should sweep
the old sorrows out of our hearts, to make room there for any happiness
the present may offer. Believe me, I'm right. We allow the past too
great a claim upon us. The present has the true, legitimate claim. You
needn't be unhappy. You can forget. Try to forget. You rob
yourself,--you rob others."
She gazed at him silently; then answered, in a colder tone: "But you
don't understand. With me it isn't a matter of grieving over the past.
It's a matter of--of absence."
"I think," he said, so very gently that the most sensitive heart could
not have taken offence, "it is of the past.
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