Julius LeVallon by Algernon Blackwood

To-day retired. I remembered Yesterday, but a Yesterday more remote, perhaps, than the fire-mist out of which our little earth was born.

I half rose in my chair. The first instinct strong in me still as I write this here in modern Streatham was to fall upon my knees as in the stress of some immense, remembered love. That glory caught me, that power of an everlasting passion that was holy. Bathed in a sea of perfect recollection, my eyes met hers, lost themselves, lived back into a Past that had been joy. A flood of shame broke fiercely over me that such a union could ever have seemed "forgotten." That To-day could smother Yesterday so easily seemed sacrilege. For this memory, uprising from the mists of hoary pre-existence, brought in its train other great emotions of recovered grandeur, all stirred into life by this ancient ceremony we three acted out. Our purpose then had been, I knew, no ordinary, selfish love, no lust of possession or ownership behind it.