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“I heard something about it at the time,” said Mrs. Armitage. “You were very much in love with somebody else, were you not?”

“Is not the conversation assuming a rather dangerous direction?” laughed Mrs. Camelford.

“I was thinking the same thing,” agreed Mrs. Everett. “One would imagine some strange influence had seized upon us, forcing us to speak our thoughts aloud.”

“I am afraid I was the original culprit,” admitted the Reverend Nathaniel. “This room is becoming quite oppressive. Had we not better go to bed?”

The ancient lamp suspended from its smoke-grimed beam uttered a faint, gurgling sob, and spluttered out. The shadow of the old Cathedral tower crept in and stretched across the room, now illuminated only by occasional beams from the cloud-curtained moon. At the other end of the table sat a peak-faced little gentleman, clean-shaven, in full-bottomed wig.

“Forgive me,” said the little gentleman. He spoke in English, with a strong accent. “But it seems to me here is a case where two parties might be of service to one another.”

The six fellow-travellers round the table looked at one another, but none spoke. The idea that came to each of them, as they explained to one another later, was that without remembering it they had taken their candles and had gone to bed. This was surely a dream.

“It would greatly assist me,” continued the little peak-faced gentleman, “in experiments I am conducting into the phenomena of human tendencies, if you would allow me to put your lives back twenty years.”

Still no one of the six replied. It seemed to them that the little old gentleman must have been sitting there among them all the time, unnoticed by them.

“Judging from your talk this evening,” continued the peak-faced little gentleman, “you should welcome my offer. You appear to me to be one and all of exceptional intelligence. You perceive the mistakes that you have made: you understand the causes. The future veiled, you could not help yourselves. What I propose to do is to put you back twenty years. You will be boys and girls again, but with this difference: that the knowledge of the future, so far as it relates to yourselves, will remain with you.

“Come,” urged the old gentleman, “the thing is quite simple of accomplishment. As–as a certain philosopher has clearly proved: the universe is only the result of our own perceptions. By what may appear to you to be magic–by what in reality will be simply a chemical operation–I remove from your memory the events of the last twenty years, with the exception of what immediately concerns your own personalities. You will retain all knowledge of the changes, physical and mental, that will be in store for you; all else will pass from your perception.”

The little old gentleman took a small phial from his waistcoat pocket, and, filling one of the massive wine-glasses from a decanter, measured into it some half-a-dozen drops. Then he placed the glass in the centre of the table.

“Youth is a good time to go back to,” said the peak-faced little gentleman, with a smile. “Twenty years ago, it was the night of the Hunt Ball. You remember it?”

It was Everett who drank first. He drank it with his little twinkling eyes fixed hungrily on the proud handsome face of Mrs. Camelford; and then handed the glass to his wife. It was she perhaps who drank from it most eagerly. Her life with Everett, from the day when she had risen from a bed of sickness stripped of all her beauty, had been one bitter wrong. She drank with the wild hope that the thing might possibly be not a dream; and thrilled to the touch of the man she loved, as reaching across the table he took the glass from her hand. Mrs. Armitage was the fourth to drink. She took the cup from her husband, drank with a quiet smile, and passed it on to Camelford. And Camelford drank, looking at nobody, and replaced the glass upon the table.