She leapt, too, into a life of moments. No pause was possible to her as
she went, except the vibrating pause of a perpetual change and of an
unflagging flight. A woman, long educated to sit still, does not
suddenly learn to live a momentary life without strong momentary
resolution. She has no light achievement in limiting not only her
foresight, which must become brief, but her memory, which must do more;
for it must rather cease than become brief. Idle memory wastes time and
other things. The moments of the woman in grey as they dropped by must
needs disappear, and be simply forgotten, as a child forgets. Idle
memory, by the way, shortens life, or shortens the sense of time, by
linking the immediate past clingingly to the present. Here may possibly
be found one of the reasons for the length of a child's time, and for the
brevity of the time that succeeds. The child lets his moments pass by
and quickly become remote through a thousand little successive oblivions.
He has not yet the languid habit of recall.
"Thou art my warrior," said Volumnia. "I holp to frame thee.
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