entirely during sleep, and referring to things that had happened to us
both when together.[A]

[Footnote A: _Note_.--Several of these letters are in my possession.
MADGE PLUNKET.]

Our privileges were such as probably no human beings could have ever
enjoyed before. Time and space were annihilated for us at the mere wish
of either--we lived in a palace of delight; all conceivable luxuries
were ours--and, better than all, and perennially, such freshness and
elation as belong only to the morning of life--and such a love for each
other (the result of circumstances not to be paralleled) as time could
never slake or quench till death should come and part us. All this, and
more, was our portion for eight hours out of twenty-four.

So what must we do sometimes, but fret that the sixteen hours which
remained did not belong to us well; that we must live two-thirds of our
lives apart; that we could not share the toils and troubles of our
work-a-day, waking existence, as we shared the blissful guerdon of our
seeming sleep--the glories of our common dream.

And then we would lament the lost years we had spent in mutual ignorance
and separation--a deplorable waste of life; when life, sleeping or
waking, was so short.

How different things might have been with us had we but known!

We need never have lost sight and touch of each other; we might have
grown up, and learned and worked and struggled together from the
first--boy and girl, brother and sister, lovers, man and wife--and yet