This evening, directed by the observation of the Arch Physician, I turned my eyes upon the girl Christine, who sat beside her grandfather. I observed, first--but the fact inspired me with no suspicion--that she was no longer a child, but a woman grown; and I began to wonder when she would come with the rest for the Arcanum. Most women, when births were common among us, used to come at about five-and-twenty; that is to say, in the first year or two of full womanhood, before their worst enemies--where there were two women, in the old days, there were two enemies--could say that they had begun to fall off. If you look round our table, you will see very few women older than twenty-four, and very few men older than thirty. There were many women at this table who might, perhaps, have been called beautiful in the old times; though now the men had ceased to think of beauty, and the women had ceased to desire admiration. Yet, if regular features, large eyes, small mouths, a great quantity of hair, and a rounded figure are beautiful, then there were many at the table who might have been called beautiful. But the girl Christine--I observed the fact with scientific interest--was so different from the other women that she seemed another kind of creature. Her eyes were soft; there is no scientific term to express this softness of youth--one observes it especially in the young of the _cervus_ kind. There was also a curious softness on her cheek, as if something would be rubbed away if one touched it. And her voice differed from that of her elder sisters; it was curiously gentle, and full of that quality which may be remarked in the wood-dove when she pairs in spring. They used to call it tenderness; but, since the thing itself disappeared, the word has naturally fallen out of use. Now, I might have observed with suspicion, whereas I only remarked it as something strange, that the company among which Christine and the old man sat were curiously stirred and uneasy. They were disturbed out of their habitual tranquillity because the girl was discoursing to them. She was telling them what she had learned about the Past. "Oh," I heard her say, "it was a beautiful time! Why did they ever suffer it to perish? Do you mean that you actually remember nothing of it?" They looked at each other sheepishly. "There were soldiers--men were soldiers; they went out to fight, with bands of music and the shouts of the people. There were whole armies of soldiers--thousands of them. They dressed in beautiful glittering clothes. Do you forget that?" One of the men murmured, hazily, that there were soldiers. "And there were sailors, who went upon the sea in great ships. Jack Carera"--she turned to one of them--"you are a sailor, too. You ought to remember." "I remember the sailors very well indeed," said this young man, readily.