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 wonder of ordinary dreams. If we did so our true dream was blurred, and became as an ordinary dream—vague, futile, unreal, and untrue—the baseless fabric of a vision. Nor must we alter ourselves in any way; even to the shape of a finger-nail, we must remain ourselves; although we kept ourselves at our very best, and could choose what age we should be. We chose from twenty-six to twenty-eight, and stuck to it.
Yet there were many things, quite as impossible in real life, that we could do with impunity—most delightful things!
For instance, after the waking cup of coffee, it was certainly delightful to spend a couple of hours in the Yosemite Valley, leisurely strolling about and gazing at the giant pines—a never-palling source of delight to both of us—breathing the fragrant fresh air, looking at our fellow-tourists and listening to their talk, with the agreeable consciousness that, solid and substantial as we were to each other, we were quite inaudible, invisible, and intangible to them. Often we would dispense with the tourists, and have the Yosemite Valley all to ourselves. (Always there, and in whatever place she had visited with her husband, we would dispense with the figure of her former self and him, a sight I could not have borne.)
When we had strolled and gazed our fill, it was delightful again, just by a slight effort of her will and a few moments' closing of our eyes, to find ourselves driving along the Via Cornice to an exquisite garden concert in Dresden, or being rowed in a gondola to a Saturday Pop at St. James's Hall. And thence, jumping into a hansom, we would be whisked through Piccadilly and the park to the Arc de Triomphe home to "Magna sed Apta," Rue de la Pompe, Passy (a charming drive, and not a bit too long), just in time for dinner.
A very delicious little dinner, judiciously ordered out of her remembrance, not mine (and served in the most exquisite little dining-room in all Paris—the Princesse de Chevagné's): "huîtres d'Ostende," let us say, and "soupe à la bonne femme," with a "perdrix aux choux" to follow, and pancakes, and "fromage de Brie;" and to drink, a bottle of "Romané Conti;" without even the bother of waiters to change the dishes; a wish, a moment's shutting of the eyes—augenblick! and it was done—and then we could wait on each other.
After my prison fare, and with nothing but tenpenny London dinners to recollect in the immediate past, I trust I shall not be thought a gross materialist for appreciating these small banquets, and in such company. (The only dinner I could recall which was not a tenpenny one, except the old dinners of my childhood, was that famous dinner at Cray, where I had discovered that the Duchess of Towers was Mimsey Seraskier, and I did not eat much of that.)