want me
and I shall want him. Dreams are silly. I prefer being up." She
clapped her hands. "That's it." Then, silent, she looked at me with an
expression of new interest. "I've been wondering and wondering what it
was: you are not really awake yet. You've never got up."

I laughed at her whimsical way of putting it; but at the back of my
brain was a troubled idea that perhaps she was revealing to me the
truth. And if so, what would "waking up," as she termed it, be like? A
flash of memory recalled to me that summer evening upon Barking Bridge,
when, as it had seemed to me, the little childish Paul had slipped away
from me, leaving me lonely and bewildered to find another Self. Was my
boyhood in like manner now falling from me? I found myself clinging to
it with vague terror. Its thoughts, its feelings--dreams: they had grown
sweet to me; must I lose them? This cold, unknown, new Self, waiting to
receive me: I shrank away from it with fear.

"Do you know, I think you will be rather nice when you wake up."

Her words recalled me to myself. "Perhaps I never shall wake up," I
said. "I don't want to wake up."

"Oh, but one can't go on dreaming all one's life," she laughed. "You'll
wake up, and fall in love with somebody real." She came across to me,
and taking the lapels of my coat in both her hands, gave me a vigorous
shake. "I hope she'll be somebody nice. I am rather afraid."

"You seem to think me a fool!" I was still angry with her, without quite
knowing why.

She shook me again. "You know I don't. But it isn't the nice people that
take best care of themselves. Tom can't. I have to take care of him."

I laughed.

"I do, really. You should hear me scold him. I like taking care of
people. Good-bye."

She held out her hand. It was white now and shapely, but one could not
have called it small. Strong it felt and firm as it gripped mine.

CHAPTER VIII.

AND HOW CAME BACK AGAIN.

I left London, the drums beating in my heart, the flags waving in my
brain. Somewhat more than a year later, one foggy wet December evening,
I sneaked back to it defeated--ah, that is a small thing, capable of
redress--disgraced. I returned to it as to a hiding-place where, lost
in the crowd, I might waste my days unnoticed until such time as I could
summon up sufficient resolution to put an end to my dead life. I had
been ambitious--dwelling again amid the bitterness of the months that
followed my return, I write in the past tense