would not have been discreet. For although she was only a false dream of
mine, a mere recollection of the exciting and eventful day, a stray
figment of my overtired and excited brain--a _more_ than agreeable
figment (what else _could_ she be!)--she was also a great lady, and had
treated me, a perfect stranger and a perfect nobody, with singular
courtesy and kindness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep
and strong that my very life was hers, to do what she liked with, and
always had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as
there was breath in my body! But this did not constitute an acquaintance
without a proper introduction, even in France--even in a dream. Even in
dreams one must be polite, even to stray figments of one's tired,
sleeping brain.

And then what business had _she_, in _this_, _my_ particular dream--as
she herself had asked of me?

But _was_ it a dream? I remembered my lodgings at Pentonville, that I
had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I was--why I came to
Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at the Paris hotel where I was now
fast asleep, its loudly-ticking clock, and all the meagre furniture. And
here was I, broad awake and conscious, in the middle of an old avenue
that had long ceased to exist--that had been built over by a huge brick
edifice covered with newly-painted trellis-work. I saw it, this edifice,
myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was everything as it had
been when I was a child; and all through the agency of this solid
phantom of a lovely young English duchess, whose warm gloved hands I had
only this minute been holding in mine! The scent of her gloves was still
in my palm. I looked at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to
twelve. All this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!