The Arch Physician started and looked astonished.
"It seems a long time," he said, "since I heard those words. I thought we had forgotten—"
"It was a dream of no change, day after day. Nothing happened. In the morning we worked; in the afternoon we rested; in the evening we took food; at night we slept. And the mind was dead. There were no books to read; there was nothing to talk about; there was nothing to hope. Always the same work—a piece of work that nobody cared to do—a mechanical piece of work. Always the same dress—the same hideous, horrible dress. We were all alike; there was nothing at all to distinguish us. The Past seemed forgotten."
"Nothing can be ever forgotten," said Dr. Linister; "but it may be put away for a time."
"Oh, when I think of all that we had forgotten, it seems terrible! Yet we lived—how could we live?—it was not life. No thought, no care, about anything. Every one centred in himself, careless of his neighbor. Why, I did not know so much as the occupants of the rooms next to my own. Men looked on women, and women on men, without thought or emotion. Love was dead—Life was Death? Harry, it was a most dreadful dream. And in the night there used to come a terrible nightmare of nothingness! It was as if I floated alone in ether, far from the world or life, and could find nothing—nothing—for the mind to grasp or think of. And I woke at the point of madness. A dreadful dream! And yet we lived. Rather than go back to that most terrible dream, I would—I would—"
She clasped her forehead with her hand and looked about her with haggard eyes.
"Yes, yes," said Dr. Linister; "I ought to have guessed your sufferings—by my own. Yet I have had my laboratory."
"Then I was shaken out of the dream by a girl—by Christine. And now we are resolved—some of us—at all costs and hazards—yes, even if we are debarred from the Great Discovery—to—live—again—to live—again!" she repeated, slowly. "Do you know, Harry, what that means? To go back—to live again! Only think what that means."
He was silent.
"Have you forgotten, Harry," she asked, softly, "what that means?"