‘You are kind to wish to see me,’ said I. ‘It is happiness to me to meet you. I am very lonely. I cannot recover my memory. It is terrible to feel, that if I had my memory I would know--I would know--oh, but not to be able to know! Have I a home? Are there persons dear to me waiting for me, and wondering what has become of me? Not to be able to know!’ said I, with my voice sinking into a whisper. ‘Yes, it is terrible,’ she exclaimed gently. ‘But remember these failures of memory do not last. Again and again they occur after severe illnesses. But when is it that the memory does not return?’ ‘But when it returns, should it return,’ said I, ‘what may it not tell me that I have lost for ever?’ ‘But it will soon return,’ she exclaimed, ‘and things are not lost for ever in a short time. How long is it since you have been without memory? Not yet a fortnight, Mr. McEwan told us. No! our minds would need to be long blank for us to awaken and discover that things dear to us are lost for ever. It is only by death,’ she added, softening her voice and smiling, ‘that things are lost, and not then for ever.’ I looked at her! at her sunken eyes, at her drawn mouth, at the malignant bloom her cheeks were touched with, at her thin, her miserably thin hands, and I thought to myself, how selfish am I to immediately intrude my sorrow upon this poor girl, who knows that she is fading from her mother’s side, and in whose heart therefore must be the secret, consuming grief of an approaching eternal farewell. Her wretchedness must be greater than mine, because _her_ trouble is positively defined to her mind, whereas mine is a deep shadow, out of which I can evoke nothing to comfort me or to distress me, to gladden my heart or to break it. She gazed at me earnestly, and with a touching look of sad affection, as though she had long known me. I was about to speak. ‘There is something,’ said she, ‘in your face that reminds me of a sister I lost four years ago. It is the expression, but only the expression. Mother will see it, I am sure.’ ‘Was your sister like you?’ I asked. ‘No, you would not have known us for sisters. Yet we were twins, and it is seldom that twins do not closely resemble each other.’ I bent my gaze downwards. I was sensible of a sudden inward, haunting sense of trouble, a sightless stirring of the mind, that affected me as a pain might. ‘When I look at you,’ she continued, ‘I fully agree with Mr. McEwan that you are not nearly so old as your white hair makes you appear. Most people look older as the months roll on, but as time passes you will look younger. Even your hair may regain its natural colour, which the doctor says is black. How strange it will be for you to look into the glass and behold another face in it! But the change will be too gradual for surprise.’ ‘You are returning to England in this ship, I believe?’ said I.