“But I should want to keep my knowledge of the world,” he said, “to profit by my experience, my wisdom, such as it is. I should want to live my life over, knowing what I know now.”
The look of weariness which Carringford’s face had worn earlier had found its way to the face of the visitor.
“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said, with a faint smile.
“But shall I not remember the life I have lived, with its shortcomings, its blunders?”
“Yes, you will remember as well as you do now—better, perhaps, for your faculties will be renewed; but whether you will profit by it—that is another matter.”
“You mean that I shall make the same mistakes, commit the same sins?”
“Let us consider to a moment. You will go back to youth. You will be young again. Perhaps you have forgotten what it is to be young. Let me remind you.” The man’s lashes met; his voice seemed to come from a great distance. “It is to be filled with the very ecstasy of living,” he breathed—“its impulses, its fevers, the things that have always belonged to youth, that have always made youth beautiful. Your experience? Yes, you will have that, too; but it will not be the experience of that same youth, but of another—the youth that you were.” The gray eyes gleamed, the voice hardened a little. “Did you ever profit by the experience of another in that earlier time?”
Carringford shook his head.
“No,” he whispered.