human
You have begun again your never-ending contrast between the past and this present. Is it not so?
gpt
True, said I.
human
I was thinking of what you, with your capacity and intelligence, joined to your love of pleasure, and your impatience of unreasonable restraint--of what you would have been in that past. And even now, when all is won and has been for a long time, my heart is sickened with thinking of all the waste of life that has gone on for so many years.
gpt
So many centuries, she said,
human
True, I said;
gpt
Come, I must not let you go off into a dream again so soon. If we must lose you, I want you to see all that you can see first before you go back again.
human
Lose me? I said--
gpt
Not yet; we will not talk of that yet. Only, what were you thinking of just now?
human
I was saying to myself, The past, the present? Should she not have said the contrast of the present with the future: of blind despair with hope?
gpt
I knew it, she said. Then she caught my hand and said excitedly,
human
Come, while there is yet time! Come! And she led me out of the room; and as we were going downstairs and out of the house into the garden by a little side door which opened out of a curious lobby, she said in a calm voice, as if she wished me to forget her sudden nervousness:
gpt
Come! we ought to join the others before they come here looking for us. And let me tell you, my friend, that I can see you are too apt to fall into mere dreamy musing: no doubt because you are not yet used to our life of repose amidst of energy; of work which is pleasure and pleasure which is work.
human
My friend, you were saying that you wondered what I should have been if I had lived in those past days of turmoil and oppression. Well, I think I have studied the history of them to know pretty well. I should have been one of the poor, for my father when he was working was a mere tiller of the soil. Well, I could not have borne that; therefore my beauty and cleverness and brightness (she spoke with no blush or simper of false shame)
gpt
Indeed it is,
human
Well, neighbours, I thought you two would like to see the old house quietly without a crowd in it. Isn't it a jewel of a house after its kind? Well, come along, for it is getting towards dinner-time. Perhaps you, guest, would like a swim before we sit down to what I fancy will be a pretty long feast?
gpt
Yes, I said,
human
I should like that.
gpt
Well, good-bye for the present, neighbour Ellen, said Dick.
human
Here comes Clara to take care of you, as I fancy she is more at home amongst our friends here.