this liberty they themselves have largely improved. The old rules in
their completeness seemed too much like a prison to her. She was set
about with importunate conditions--a caesura, a rhyme, narrow lodgings in
strange towns, bankruptcies, salaries astray--and she took only a little
gentle liberty.




THE HOURS OF SLEEP


There are hours claimed by Sleep, but refused to him. None the less are
they his by some state within the mind, which answers rhythmically and
punctually to that claim. Awake and at work, without drowsiness, without
languor, and without gloom, the night mind of man is yet not his day
mind; he has night-powers of feeling which are at their highest in
dreams, but are night's as well as sleep's. The powers of the mind in
dreams, which are inexplicable, are not altogether baffled because the
mind is awake; it is the hour of their return as it is the hour of a
tide's, and they do return.

In sleep they have their free way. Night then has nothing to hamper her
influence, and she draws the emotion, the senses, and the nerves of the
sleeper. She urges him upon those extremities of anger and love,
contempt and terror to which not only can no event of the real day
persuade him, but for which, awake, he has perhaps not even the capacity.
This increase of capacity, which is the dream's, is punctual to the
night, even though sleep and the dream be kept at arm's length.