that when I
lost one I should, while searching for it, be pretty sure of coming on
another.

I opened my novel. It was about a gentleman of title who in his day
was the best swordsman in Europe. He loved a scornful lady with great
devotion. I read a hundred pages with dwindling attention and at last
found that I had failed to be excited by the story of a prolonged duel
fought on the brink of a precipice under the shadow of an ancient castle
from the battlements of which the scornful lady was looking down. I was
vexed with myself, for I ought to have enjoyed the scene. I turned back
and read the whole chapter through a second time. Again I somehow missed
the emotion of it. My mind kept wandering from the lunging figures
on the edge of the cliff to a vision of Lalage in a dark green dress
speeding along the road on her bicycle.

I laid down the novel and set myself the pleasant task of constructing
imaginary interviews between Lalage and the Archdeacon. As a rule I
enjoy the meanderings of my own imagination, and in this particular
case I had provided it with material to work on much more likely to be
entertaining than the gambols of the expert swordsman or the scorn of
the lady above him. But my imagination failed me. It pictured Lalage
well enough. But the Archdeacon, for some reason, would not take
shape. I tried again and again with no better success. The image of the
Archdeacon got fainter and fainter, until I could no longer visualize
even his apron.

At some time, perhaps an hour after I had settled down, I went to sleep.
I cannot fix, or make any attempt at fixing, the exact moment at which
the conscious effort of my imagination passed into the unconscious
romance building of dream. But I know that the Archdeacon totally
disappeared, while Lalage, a pleasantly stimulating personality, haunted
me. I may have slept for an hour, perhaps for an hour and a half.
Looking back on the afternoon, and arranging its chronology to fit
between two fixed points of time, I am certain that I did not sleep for
more than an hour and a half. It was a few minutes after two o'clock
when I sat down to luncheon. I am sure of this, because my mother's eyes
sought the clock on the chimney piece when we entered the dining-room
together and mine followed them. It was half-past five when I saw her
again in the drawing-room. I am equally sure of this because she kissed
me three times rather effusively and I was obliged to look at my watch