Jay told Mr. Russell, one by one, small unmattering things that she remembered out of her Secret World, and each time when she had told him he wondered with regret why he had not remembered it by himself.  He had never thought it worth while to remember before; his imagination was crippled, and needed crutches.  He had not thought it worth while to think much about the time when he was young, the time when his past had been as big and shining as his future.  The longer we live, it seems, the less we remember, and no men and few women normally possess a secret story after thirty.  It would not matter so much if you only lost your story, a worse fate than loss befalls it—­you laugh at it.  It is curious how the world draws in as one gets older and wiser.  The past catches one up, the future burns away like a candle.  I used to think that growing up was like walking from one end of a meadow to the other, I thought that the meadow would remain, and one had only to turn one’s head to see it all again.  But now I know that growing up is like going through a door into a little room, and the door shuts behind one.

I think Mr. Russell’s point of difference from most older and wiser people was that he had not forgotten the excitement of writing down snatches of his secret story as it came to him, and the passion of tearing up the thing that he wrote, and the delight of finding that he could not tear it out of his heart.  He was a silent person, and a rather neglected person, and unbusinesslike, and unsuccessful, and uncultured, and unsociable, and unbeautiful.  So there was nothing worse than emptiness where his secret story used to be.  He had not found it worth while to fill the space.  He had not found it worth while to shut the door.

“Do you remember that Christmas,” said Jay, “when there was a blizzard, and a great sea, and the foam blinded the western windows of the House, and the children went out to sing ‘Love and joy come to you’? (Those aren’t real words any more now, are they? only pretty caricatures.) And when the children came in with snow and foam plastered up their windward sides, do you remember that one of them said, ’Is this what Lot’s wife felt like?’”

“I can just remember Love and Joy mixed up with the wind at the window,” said Mr. Russell.  “But always best of all I can remember the way you looked on ...”

“Me?” said Jay.  “I wasn’t there.”

“Oh yes you were, and that’s what you forget.  You were there always, and when I was looking for the House I believe it was always you I was expecting to find there.”

“Me!  Me, with this same old face?” gasped Jay.  “Oh, excuse me, but you lie.  You never recognised me in my ’bus.”

“I knew without knowing I knew.  I remembered without remembering that I remembered.  We haven’t made a psychical discovery, Jay, we have done nothing to write a book about.  Only you remember so well that you have reminded me.”