"But now you do?" said Christine.
"To-night we do, because you have filled our hearts with the old thoughts. To get out of the dull, dull round—why is it that we never felt it dull till to-night? Oh, so long as we can remember the old thoughts, let us continue to dance and to play and to sing. If the old thoughts cease to come back to us"—she looked at Geoffrey—"let us fall back into our dulness, like the men and women round us."
"It was to please me first," said Christine. "You were so very kind as to come here to please me, because I can have no recollection at all of the Past, and I was curious to understand what I read. Come again—to please yourselves. Oh, I have learned so much—so very much more than I ever expected! There are so many, many things that I did not dream of. But let us always dance," she said—"let us always dance—let me always feel every time you come as if there was nothing in the world but sweet music calling me, and I was spinning round and round, but always in some place far better and sweeter than this."
"Yes," Lady Mildred said, gravely. "Thus it was we used to feel."
"And I have seen you as you were—gentlemen and gentlewomen together. Oh, it is beautiful! Come every night. Let us never cease to change the dismal Present for the sunny Past. But there is one thing—one thing that I cannot understand."
"What is that?" asked Lady Mildred.
"In the old books there is always, as I said before, a young man in love with a girl. What is it—Love?" The girls sighed and cast down their eyes. "Was it possible for a man so to love a girl as to desire nothing in the world but to have her love, and even to throw away his life—actually his very life—his very life—for her sake?"
"Dorothy," said Geoffrey, taking both her hands, "was it possible? Oh, was it possible?"
Dorothy burst into tears.
"It was possible!" she cried; "but oh, it is not possible any longer."