"No; their faces are entirely happy." "This you do not understand. Christine, if you were sure that in the end you would be as happy as that old woman at the end, would you be content to begin with the beginning? Would you play the part of that girl, and walk--with me--along the Stream of Life?" He took her hand, but she made no reply, save that her eyes filled with tears. Presently she murmured, "They are always happy--at the beginning and at the end. Did they know at the beginning that there would be an end?" "They knew; everybody knew; the very children knew almost from infancy the great Law of Nature, that for everything there is the allotted end. They knew it." "And yet they were always happy. I cannot understand it." "We have destroyed that happiness," said the young man. "Love cannot exist when there is no longer end, or change, or anything to hope or fear--no mystery, nothing to hope or fear. What is a woman outside the Museum in the eyes of the College? She is only the half of humanity, subject to disease and requiring food at intervals. She no longer attracts men by the sacred mystery of her beauty. She is not even permitted any longer to make herself beautiful by her dress; nor is she allowed to create the feeling of mystery and the unknown by seclusion. She lives in the open, like the rest. We all live together; we know what each one says and thinks and does; nay, most of us have left off thinking and talking altogether." But Christine was hardly listening; she could not understand this talk. She was looking at the pictures. "Oh," she said, "they look so happy! There is such a beautiful contentment in their eyes! They love each other so, that they think of nothing but their love. They have forgotten the end." "Nay, but look at the end." "They are happy still, although the river flows into the Ocean. How can they be happy?" "You shall learn more, Christine. You have seen enough to understand that the talk of the Physicians about the miseries of the old time is mischievous nonsense, with which they have fooled us into slavery." "Oh, if they heard you--" "Let them hear," he replied, sternly. "I hope, before long, we may make them hear. Christine, you can restore the old love by your own example. You alone have nothing to remember and nothing to unlearn. As for the rest of us, we have old habits to forget and prejudices to overcome before we can get back to the Past." Then he led her to another picture. The scene was a green village church-yard, standing amid trees--yews and oaks--and round a gray old church. Six strong men bore a bier piled with flowers towards an open grave, newly dug. Beside the grave stood one in a white robe, carrying a book. Behind the bier followed, hand-in-hand, a weeping company of men, women, and children. But he who walked first wept not. "Oh," cried Christine, "he is dead! He is dead!" She burst into tears.