He thought.

"I could tell you all, tell you every little thing in the
dream, but as to what I did in the daytime--no. I could not
tell--I do not remember. My memory--my memory has gone. The
business of life slips from me--"

He leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. For a
long time he said nothing.

"And then?" said I.

"The war burst like a hurricane."

He stared before him at unspeakable things.

"And then?" I urged again.

"One touch of unreality," he said, in the low tone of a man
who speaks to himself, "and they would have been nightmares.
But they were not nightmares--they were not nightmares. No!"

He was silent for so long that it dawned upon me that there
was a danger of losing the rest of the story. But he went on
talking again in the same tone of questioning self-communion.

"What was there to do but flight? I had not thought the war
would touch Capri--I had seemed to see Capri as being out of it
all, as the contrast to it all; but two nights after the whole