Page:The Inner House.djvu/75

Rh "It was to please me first," said Christine. "You were so very kind as to come here to please me, because I can have no recollection at all of the Past, and I was curious to understand what I read. Come again—to please yourselves. Oh, I have learned so much—so very much more than I ever expected! There are so many, many things that I did! not dream of. But let us always dance," she said—"let us always dance—let me always feel every time you come as if there was nothing in the world but sweet music calling me, and I was spinning round and round, but always in some place far better and sweeter than this."

"Yes," Lady Mildred said, gravely. "Thus it was we used to feel."

"And I have seen you as you were—gentlemen and gentlewomen together. Oh, it is beautiful! Come every night. Let us never cease to change the dismal Present for the sunny Past. But there is one thing—one thing that I cannot understand."

"What is that?" asked Lady Mildred.

"In the old books there is always, as I said before, a young man in love with a girl. "What is it—Love?" The girls sighed and cast down their eyes. "Was it possible for a man so to love a girl as to desire nothing in the world but to have her love, and even to throw away his life—actually his very life—his very life—for her sake?"

"Dorothy," said Geoffrey, taking both her hands, "was it possible? Oh, was it possible?"

Dorothy burst into tears.

"It was possible!" she cried; "but oh, it is not possible any longer."

"Let us pretend," said Geoffrey, "let us dream that it is possible."

"Even to throw away your life—to die—actually your