"I think," said Mildred, "it might depend partly on how the case is put before them. If you made them see very clearly the miseries of their present life, and made them yearn ardently for the things which they have only just remembered, some of them might follow, at all costs. But for most the College and what it holds would prove too much."
"Yet you yourself—and Christine—"
"As for me, it seems as if I remember more than anybody because I think of the sorrows of the Past. I cannot tell now how I ever came to forget those sorrows. And they are now grown so dear to me, that for the very fear of losing them again, I would give up the Gift of the College and go with you. As for Christine, she has never known at all the dread which they now pretend used to fill all our minds and poisoned all our lives. How, then, should she hesitate? Besides, she loves you, Jack—and that is enough."
"Quite enough," said Christine, smiling.
"If you remember everything," Jack went on, gravely, "you remember, Mildred, that there was something in life besides play and society. In a corner of your father's park, for instance, there was an old gray building, with a small tower and a peal of bells. The place stood in a square enclosure, in which were an old broken cross, an ancient yew-tree, two or three head-stones, and the graves of buried villagers. You remember that place, Mildred? You and I have often played in that ground; on weekdays we have prowled about the old building and read the monuments on the walls; on Sundays we used to sit there with all the people. Do you remember?"
Mildred clasped her hands.
"How could I ever forget?" she cried. "How could any of us forget?"
"Because Grout robbed you of your memory, my cousin. He could not rob mine."
"Alas!" she lamented, "how can we ever get that back again?"
"By memory, Mildred. It will come back presently. Think of that, and you will be less afraid to come with us. If that was able to comfort the world formerly when the world was full of life and joy and needed so little comfort, what should it not do for you now, when the world is so dull and dismal, and the Awful Present is so long that it seems never to have had a beginning, just as it promises never to have an end. Courage, Cousin Mildred.