"If to remember is to regret, why should we invite the pain of regret? We cannot have the old life except with the old conditions; the short life and the--"
"If I could remember--if I had ever belonged to the Past," the girl interrupted, quickly; "oh, I would remember every moment--I would live every day of the old life over and over again. But I can do nothing--nothing--but read of the splendid Past and look forward to such a future as your own. Alas! why was I born at all, since I was born into such a world as this? Why was I called into existence when all the things of which I read every day have passed away? And what remains in their place?"
"We have Life," said one of the men, but not confidently.
"Life! Yes--and what a life! Oh, what a life! Well, we waste time. Listen now--and if you can, for once forget the present and recall the past. Do not stay to think how great a gulf lies between; do not count the years--indeed, you cannot. Whether they are one hundred or five hundred they do not know, even at the Holy College itself. I am sure it will make you happier--'twill console and comfort you--in this our life of desperate monotony, only to remember--to recall--how you used to live."
They answered with a look of blank bewilderment.
"It is so long ago--so long ago," said one of them again.
"Look around you. Here are all the things that used to be your own. Let them help you to remember. Here are the arms that the men carried when they went out to fight; here are the jewels that the women wore. Think of your dress in the days when you were allowed to dress, and we did not all wear frocks of gray beige, as if all women were exactly alike. Will that not help?"
They looked about them helplessly. No, they did not yet remember; their dull eyes were filled with a kind of anxious wonder, as might be seen in one rudely awakened out of sleep. They looked at the things in the great room, but that seemed to bring nothing back to their minds. The Present was round them like a net which they could neither cut through nor see through; it was a veil around them through which they could not pass. It had been so long with them; it was so unchanging; for so long they had had nothing to expect; for so long, therefore, they had not cared to look back. The Holy College had produced, in fact, what it had proposed and designed. The minds of the people had become quiescent. And to think that so beautiful a state of things should be destroyed by a girl--the only child in the Community!