"Thank you, monsieur."

"Good night, Amedee."

"Good night, monsieur."

Falling to sleep has always been an intricate matter with me: I liken it
to a nightly adventure in an enchanted palace. Weary-limbed and with
burning eyelids, after long waiting in the outer court of wakefulness, I
enter a dim, cool antechamber where the heavy garment of the body is
left behind and where, perhaps, some acquaintance or friend greets me
with a familiar speech or a bit of nonsense--or an unseen orchestra may
play music that I know. From here I go into a spacious apartment where
the air and light are of a fine clarity, for it is the hall of
revelations, and in it the secrets of secrets are told, mysteries are
resolved, perplexities cleared up, and sometimes I learn what to do
about a picture that has bothered me. This is where I would linger, for
beyond it I walk among crowding fantasies, delusions, terrors and shame,
to a curtain of darkness where they take my memory from me, and I know
nothing of my own adventures until I am pushed out of a secret door into
the morning sunlight. Amedee was the acquaintance who met me in the
antechamber to-night. He remarked that Madame d'Armand was the most
beautiful woman in the world, and vanished. And in the hall of
revelations I thought that I found a statue of her--but it was veiled. I
wished to remove the veil, but a passing stranger stopped and told me
laughingly that the veil was all that would ever be revealed of her to
me--of her, or any other woman!