trouble, and its more
disturbing joys, can be effectually forgotten. Again, in that blissful
solitude the young girl lost the convention of her prim, narrow
upbringing, and told me in a natural, dreamy way of the loneliness of
her new life. With an undertone of sadness she made me feel how in that
spacious home each one of the household was isolated by the personal
magnificence of her father and herself; that there confidence had no
altar, and sympathy no shrine; and that there even her father's face
was as distant as the old country life seemed now. Once more, the
wisdom of my manhood and the experience of my years laid themselves at
the girl's feet. It was seemingly their own doing; for the individual
"I" had no say in the matter, but only just obeyed imperative orders.
And once again the flying seconds multiplied themselves endlessly. For
it is in the arcana of dreams that existences merge and renew
themselves, change and yet keep the same--like the soul of a musician
in a fugue. And so memory swooned, again and again, in sleep.

It seems that there is never to be any perfect rest. Even in Eden the
snake rears its head among the laden boughs of the Tree of Knowledge.
The silence of the dreamless night is broken by the roar of the
avalanche; the hissing of sudden floods; the clanging of the engine
bell marking its sweep through a sleeping American town; the clanking
of distant paddles over the sea.... Whatever it is, it is breaking the
charm of my Eden. The canopy of greenery above us, starred with
diamond-points of light, seems to quiver in the ceaseless beat of
paddles; and the restless bell seems as though it would never cease....

All at once the gates of Sleep were thrown wide open, and my waking
ears took in the cause of the disturbing sounds. Waking existence is
prosaic enough--there was somebody knocking and ringing at someone's
street door.

I was pretty well accustomed in my Jermyn Street chambers to passing
sounds; usually I did not concern myself, sleeping or waking, with the
doings, however noisy, of my neighbours. But this noise was too
continuous, too insistent, too imperative to be ignored. There was
some active intelligence behind that ceaseless sound; and some stress
or need behind the intelligence. I was not altogether selfish, and at
the thought of someone's need I was, without premeditation, out of bed.
Instinctively I looked at my watch. It was just three o'clock; there
was a fain