Even in
dreams one must be polite, even to stray figments of one's tired,
sleeping brain.
And then what business had _she_, in _this_, _my_ particular dream--as
she herself had asked of me?
But _was_ it a dream? I remembered my lodgings at Pentonville, that I
had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I was--why I came to
Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at the Paris hotel where I was now
fast asleep, its loudly-ticking clock, and all the meagre furniture. And
here was I, broad awake and conscious, in the middle of an old avenue
that had long ceased to exist--that had been built over by a huge brick
edifice covered with newly-painted trellis-work. I saw it, this edifice,
myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was everything as it had
been when I was a child; and all through the agency of this solid
phantom of a lovely young English duchess, whose warm gloved hands I had
only this minute been holding in mine! The scent of her gloves was still
in my palm. I looked at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to
twelve. All this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!
Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned my steps
towards my old home, and, to my surprise, was just able to look over the
garden wall, which I had once thought about ten feet high.
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