AINED

As between the man who achieves greatness and him who has greatness
thrust upon him there lies a whole world of space, so is there an
immense interval between one who is the object of his own delusions and
him who forms the subject of delusion to others.

My reader may have already noticed that nothing was easier for me than
to lend myself to the idle current of my fancy. Most men who build
"castles in Spain," as the old adage calls them, do so purely
to astonish their friends. _I_ indulged in these architectural
extravagances in a very different spirit. I built my castle to live in
it; from foundation to roof-tree, I planned every detail of it to
suit my own taste, and all my study was to make it as habitable and
comfortable as I could. Ay, and what's more, live in it I did, though
very often the tenure was a brief one; sometimes while breaking my egg
at breakfast, sometimes as I drew on my gloves to walk out, and yet no
terror of a short lease ever deterred me from finishing the edifice
in the most expensive manner. I gilded my architraves and frescoed my
ceilings as though all were to endure for centuries; and laid out the
gardens and disposed the parterres as though I were to walk in them in
my extreme old age. This faculty of lending myself to an illusion by no
means adhered to me where the deception was supplied by another; from
the moment I entered one of _their_ castles, I felt myself in a strange
house. I continually forgot where the stairs were, what this gallery
opened on, where that corridor led to. No use was it to say, "You are at
home here. You are at your own fireside." I knew and I felt that I was
not.

By this declaration I mean my reader to understand that, while ready for
any exigency of a story devised by myself, I was perfectly miserable
at playing a part written for me by a friend; nor was this feeling
diminished by the thought that I really did not know the person I
was believed to represent; nor had I the very vaguest clew to his
antecedents or belongings.

As I set out in search of Miss Herbert, these were the reflections I
revolved, occasionally asking myself, "Is the old lady at all touched
in the upper story? Is there not something private-asylumish in these
wanderings?" But still, apart from this special instance, she was a
marvel of acuteness and good sense. I found Miss Herbert in a little
arbor at her work; the newspaper on the bench beside her.

"So," said she, without look