To return thither, where we left her lying unconscious. Soon the color
would come back to her cheeks, the breath to her nostrils, the pulse to
her heart, and she would wake to her Eden, as she called it--our common
inner life--that we might spend it in each other's company for the next
eight hours.

Pending this happy moment, I would make coffee (such coffee!), and smoke
a cigarette or two; and to fully appreciate the bliss of _that_ one must
be an habitual smoker who lives his real life in an English jail.

When she awoke from her sixteen hours' busy trance in the outer world,
such a choice of pleasures lay before us as no other mortal has ever
known. She had been all her life a great traveller, and had dwelt in
many lands and cities, and seen more of life and the world and nature
than most people. I had but to take her hand, and one of us had but to
wish, and, lo! wherever either of us had been, whatever either of us had
seen or heard or felt, or even eaten or drunk, there it was all over
again to choose from, with the other to share in it--such a hypnotism of
ourselves and each other as was never dreamed of before.

Everything was as life-like, as real to us both, as it had been to
either at the actual time of its occurrence, with an added freshness and
charm that never belonged to mortal existence. It was no dream; it was a
second life, a better land.

We had, however, to stay within certain bounds, and beware of
transgressing certain laws that we discovered for ourselves, but could
not quite account for. For instance, it was fatal to attempt exploits
that were outside of our real experience; to fly, or to jump from a
height, or do any of these non-natural things that make the charm and