I was so excited and bewildered by the adventures I had gone through, that, from very commonness, all the things about me looked alien and strange. I had no feeling of relation to the world of ordinary life. The first thing I did was to hang my sword in its own old place, and the next to take down the bit of tapestry from the opposite wall, which I proceeded to examine in the light of my recollection of that round the denuded door. Room was left for not even a single doubt as to the relation between this and that: they had been wrought in one and the same piece by fair fingers of some long vanished time.
CHAPTER XLII. A TALK ABOUT SUICIDE.
In the same excited mood, but repressing it with all the energy I could gather, I returned to the Hall and made my way to the library. There Charley soon joined me.
‘Why didn’t you come to breakfast?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been home, and changed my clothes,’ I answered. ‘I couldn’t well appear in a tail-coat. It’s bad enough to have to wear such an ugly thing by candle-light.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked again, after an interval of silence, which I judge from the question must have been rather a long one.
‘What is the matter with me, Charley?’
‘I can’t tell. You don’t seem yourself somehow.’
I do not know what answer I gave him, but I knew myself what was the matter with me well enough. The form and face of the maiden of my dream, the Athanasia lost that she might be found, blending with the face and form of Mary Osborne, filled my imagination so that I could think of nothing else. Gladly would I have been rid of even Charley’s company, that, while my hands were busy with the books, my heart might brood at will now upon the lovely dream, now upon the lovely vision to which I awoke from it, and which, had it not glided into the forms of the foregone dream, and possessed it with itself, would have banished it altogether. At length I was aware of light steps and sweet voices in the next room, and Mary and Clara presently entered.