"No, Harry; we have all been dreaming for a long, long time—never mind how long. Just now we are not dreaming, we are truly awake. You are my old playfellow, and I am your old sweetheart," she said, with a little blush. "Tell me what you are doing—always in your laboratory. I suppose, always finding some new secrets. Does it make you any happier, Harry, to be always finding something new?"
"It is the only thing that makes life endurable—to discover the secrets of Nature. For what other purpose do we live?"
"Then, Harry, for what purpose do the rest of us live, who do not investigate those secrets? Can women be happy in no other way? We do not prosecute any kind of research, you know."
"Happy? Are we in the Present or the Past, Mildred?"
He looked about him, as if expecting to see the figures of the Pictures in the Gallery walking about upon the grass.
"Just now, Harry, we are in the Past. We are back—we two together—in the glorious and beautiful Past, where everything was delightful. Outside this place there is the horrible Present. You have made the Present for us, and therefore you ought to know what it is. Let me look at you, Harry. Why, the old look is coming back to your eyes. Take off that black gown, Harry, and throw it away, while you are with me. So. You are now my old friend again, and we can talk. You are no longer the President of the Holy College, the terrible and venerable Arch Physician, the Guardian of the House of Life. You are plain Harry Linister again. Tell me, then, Harry, are you happy in this beautiful Present that you have made?"
"No, Mildred; I am never happy."
"Then why not unmake the Present? Why not return to the Past?"
"It is impossible. We might go back to the Past for a little; but it would become intolerable again, as it did before. Formerly there was no time for any of the fleeting things of life to lose their rapture. All things were enjoyed for a moment, and then vanished. Now"—he sighed wearily—"they last—they last. So that there is nothing left for us but the finding of new secrets. And for you, Mildred?"
"I have been in a dream," she replied. "Oh, a long, long nightmare, that has never left me, day or night. I don't know how long it has lasted. But it has lifted at last, thank God!"