"Just now, Harry, we are in the Past. We are back--we two together--in the glorious and beautiful Past, where everything was delightful. Outside this place there is the horrible Present. You have made the Present for us, and therefore you ought to know what it is. Let me look at you, Harry. Why, the old look is coming back to your eyes. Take off that black gown, Harry, and throw it away, while you are with me. So. You are now my old friend again, and we can talk. You are no longer the President of the Holy College, the terrible and venerable Arch Physician, the Guardian of the House of Life. You are plain Harry Linister again. Tell me, then, Harry, are you happy in this beautiful Present that you have made?" "No, Mildred; I am never happy." "Then why not unmake the Present? Why not return to the Past?" "It is impossible. We might go back to the Past for a little; but it would become intolerable again, as it did before. Formerly there was no time for any of the fleeting things of life to lose their rapture. All things were enjoyed for a moment, and then vanished. Now"--he sighed wearily--"they last--they last. So that there is nothing left for us but the finding of new secrets. And for you, Mildred?" "I have been in a dream," she replied. "Oh, a long, long nightmare, that has never left me, day or night. I don't know how long it has lasted. But it has lifted at last, thank GOD!" 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--"