“Whatever he is,” she interrupted, “he'll be alive, and he'll want me and I shall want him. Dreams are silly. I prefer being up.” She clapped her hands. “That's it.” Then, silent, she looked at me with an expression of new interest. “I've been wondering and wondering what it was: you are not really awake yet. You've never got up.”
I laughed at her whimsical way of putting it; but at the back of my brain was a troubled idea that perhaps she was revealing to me the truth. And if so, what would “waking up,” as she termed it, be like? A flash of memory recalled to me that summer evening upon Barking Bridge, when, as it had seemed to me, the little childish Paul had slipped away from me, leaving me lonely and bewildered to find another Self. Was my boyhood in like manner now falling from me? I found myself clinging to it with vague terror. Its thoughts, its feelings—dreams: they had grown sweet to me; must I lose them? This cold, unknown, new Self, waiting to receive me: I shrank away from it with fear.
“Do you know, I think you will be rather nice when you wake up.”
Her words recalled me to myself. “Perhaps I never shall wake up,” I said. “I don't want to wake up.”
“Oh, but one can't go on dreaming all one's life,” she laughed. “You'll wake up, and fall in love with somebody real.” She came across to me, and taking the lapels of my coat in both her hands, gave me a vigorous shake. “I hope she'll be somebody nice. I am rather afraid.”
“You seem to think me a fool!” I was still angry with her, without quite knowing why.
She shook me again. “You know I don't. But it isn't the nice people that take best care of themselves. Tom can't. I have to take care of him.”
I laughed.
“I do, really. You should hear me scold him. I like taking care of people. Good-bye.”
She held out her hand. It was white now and shapely, but one could not have called it small. Strong it felt and firm as it gripped mine.