t well. The Becketts would be angels
to Brian when I was gone! But the dreamer of the dream would not let me
stir hand or foot. He put a spell of stillness upon me; he shut me up in
a transparent crystal box, while outside all the world moved about its
own affairs.

The mauve light of Paris nights filtered up from the gleaming asphalt,
as if through a roof of clouded glass over a subterranean ballroom lit
with blue and purple lanterns. Street lamps, darkly shaded for
air-raids, trailed their white lights downward, long and straight, like
first-communion veils. Distant trees and shrubs and statues began to
retreat into the dusk, as if withdrawing from the sight of fevered
human-folk to rest. Violet shadows rose in a tide, and poured through
the gold-green tunnel of chestnut trees, as sea-water pours into a cave.
And the shadow-sea had a voice like the whisper of waves. It said, "The
dream is Jim Wyndham's dream." I felt him near me--still in the dream.
The one I had waited for had come.

I was free to move. The transparent box was broken.

* * * * *

What the meaning of my impression was I don't know. But it must have a
meaning, it was so strong and real. It has made me change my mind
about--the other alternative. I want to live, and find my way back into
that dream.

CHAPTER VII

Padre, you were right. My greatest comfort, as of old, is in turning to
you.

I think you had a glimpse of the future when you left me that last
message: "Write to me, in the old way, just as if I were alive and had
gone on a long journey."

When I lock my door, and get out this journal, it seems as if a second
door--a door in the wall--opened, to show you smiling the good smile
which made your face different from any other. I don't deserve the
smile. Did I ever deserve it? Yet you gave it even when I was at my
worst. Now it seems to say, "In spite of all, I won't turn my back on
you. I haven't given you up."

When I first began to write in this book (the purple-covered journal
which was your last present to me), I meant just to relieve my heart by
putting on paper, as if for you, the story of my wickedness. Now the
story is told, I can't stop. I can't shut the door in the wall! I shall
go on, and on. I shall tell you all that happens, all I feel, and see,
and think. That must have been what you meant me to do.

When Brian and I were away from home a million years ago, before the
war, we wrot