"Yes, yes," cried Christine, "but you will come again. You will come again, and we will make every night a Play and Pretence of the beautiful--the lovely Past. When we lay aside the gray frocks, and let down our hair, we shall go back to the old time--the dear old time."
The young man named Jack remained behind when the others were gone. "If it were possible," he said, "for a man to give up everything--even his life--for a woman, in the old times, when life was a rich and glorious possession--how much more ought he not to be willing to lay it down, now that it has been made a worthless weed?"
"I have never felt so happy"--the girl was thinking of something else. "I have never dreamed that I could feel so happy. Now I know what I have always longed for--to dance round and round forever, forgetting all but the joy of the music and the dance. But oh, Jack"--her face turned pale again--"how could they ever have been happy, even while they waltzed, knowing that every minute brought them nearer and nearer to the dreadful end?"
"I don't know. Christine, if I were you, I would never mention that ugly topic again, except when we are not dressed up and acting. How lovely they looked--all of them--but none of them to compare with the sweetest rose-bud of the garden?"
He took her hand and kissed it, and then left her alone with the old man in the great Museum.
It would be idle to dwell upon the repetition of such scenes as those described in the last chapter. These unhappy persons continued to meet day after day in the Museum; after changing their lawful garments for the fantastic habits worn before the Great Discovery, they lost themselves nightly in the imagination of the Past. They presently found others among the People, who had also been gentlewomen and gentlemen in the old days, and brought them also into the company; so that there were now, every evening, some thirty gathered together. Nay, they even procured food and made suppers for themselves, contrary to the practice of common meals enjoined by the Holy College; they gloried in being a company apart from the rest; and because they remembered the Past, they had the audacity to give themselves, but only among themselves, airs of superiority. In the daytime they wore the common dress, and were like the rest of the People. The thing grew, however. Every evening they recalled more of the long-vanished customs and modes of thought--one remembering this and the other that little detail--until almost every particular of the ancient life had returned to them. Then a strange thing happened. For though the Present offered still--and this they never denied--its calm, unchanging face, with no disasters to trouble and no certain and miserable end to dread; with no anxieties, cares, and miseries; with no ambitions and no struggles; they fell to yearning after the old things; they grew to loathe the Present; they could hardly sit with patience in the Public Hall; they went to their day's work with ill-concealed disgust. Yet, so apathetic had the people grown that nothing of this was observed; so careless and so unsuspicious were we ourselves that though the singing and playing grew louder and continued longer every evening, none of us suspected anything. Singing, in my ears, was no more than an unmeaning noise; that the girl in the Museum should sing and play seemed foolish, but then children are foolish--they like to make a great noise.