and understand when awake. Wherever I have forgotten I will put a line
of little dots. Only when I sleep and dream can I recall and understand
the rest. It seems all very simple then. I often say to myself, "I will
fix it well in my mind, and put it into well-chosen words--_her_
words--and learn them by heart; and then wake cautiously and remember
them, and write them all down in a book, so that they shall do for
others all they have done for me, and turn doubt into happy certainty,
and despair into patience and hope and high elation."

[Illustration: "IT IS MARY SERASKIER!"]

But the bell rings and I wake, and my memory plays me false. Nothing
remains but the knowledge _that all will be well for us all, and of such
a kind that those who do not sigh for the moon will be well content_.

Alas, this knowledge: I cannot impart it to others. Like many who have
lived before me, I cannot prove--I can only affirm....

* * * * *

"How odd and old-fashioned it feels," she began, "to have eyes and ears
again, and all that--little open windows on to what is near us. They are
very clumsy contrivances! I had already forgotten them."

* * * * *

Look, there goes our old friend, the water-rat, under the bank--the old
fat father--_le bon gros pere_--as we used to call him. He is only a
little flat picture moving upsidedown in the opposite direction across
the backs of our eyes, and the farther he goes the smaller he seems. A