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