Page:The Inner House.djvu/77

Rh —how much more ought he not to be willing to lay it down, now that it has been made a worthless weed?"

"I have never felt so happy"—the girl was thinking of something else. "I have never dreamed that I could feel so happy. Now I know what I have always longed for—to dance round and round forever, forgetting all but the joy of the music and the dance. But oh, Jack"—her face turned pale again—"how could they ever have been happy, even while they waltzed, knowing that every minute brought them nearer and nearer to the dreadful end?"

"I don't know. Christine, if I were you, I would never mention that ugly topic again, except when we are not dressed up and acting. How lovely they looked—all of them—but none of them to compare with the sweetest rose-bud of the garden?"

He took her hand and kissed it, and then left her alone with the old man in the great Museum.

would be idle to dwell upon the repetition of such scenes as those described in the last chapter. These unhappy persons continued to meet day after day in the Museum; after changing their lawful garments for the fantastic habits worn before the Great Discovery, they lost themselves nightly in the imagination of the Past. They presently found others among the People, who had also been gentlewomen and gentlemen in the old days, and brought them also into the company; so that there were now, every evening, some thirty gathered together. Nay,