On the
top of the last upward stretch they stopped for the view, and Miss
Gerald asked abruptly: "Why were you so sad?"
"When was I sad?" he asked, in turn.
"I don't know. Weren't you sad?"
"When I was here yesterday, you mean?" She smiled on his fortunate
guess, and he said: "Oh, I don't know. It might have begun with
thinking--
'Of old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.'
You know the pirates used to come sailing over the peaceful sea yonder
from Africa, to harry these coasts, and carry off as many as they could
capture into slavery in Tunis and Algiers. It was a long, dumb kind of
misery that scarcely made an echo in history, but it haunted my fancy
yesterday, and I saw these valleys full of the flight and the pursuit
which used to fill them, up to the walls of the villages, perched on the
heights where men could have built only for safety. Then, I got to
thinking of other things--"
"And thinking of things in the past always makes you sad," she said, in
pensive reflection. "If it were not for the wearying of always trying to
remember, I don't believe I should want my memory back.
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