"Drugging you?" I exclaimed.
"Yes; did you think I couldn't taste that stuff that you got my parents to give me through all its disguise? Do you think I did not feel its influence?"
"A salutary influence only, I hope," I answered, being forced at length to admit the stratagem that I had felt it my duty to adopt.
"What you would call a salutary influence," he retorted. "But do you know," he added, almost fiercely, "that you have robbed me of those dreams that constituted the better part of my life? In fact, my real, my only life."
"I am sorry for that," I remarked. "Do you then not dream at all now?"
"If I dream, I do but dream—like all ordinary mortals, but my second existence is closed, I fear, for ever. I will tell you what I dreamt last night. I walked towards the entrance of a beautiful garden where I had often been in the habit of meeting Edith, and I found the gate closed. I shook it, and tried to open it by main force, when I noticed something written over the gate. I read these words, 'This is the abode of spirits untrammelled by the flesh.'
"I did not know other than that I was as much in the spirit as on any of the preceding nights, so I tried the gate again, only to meet with the same success; but this time I heard a voice calling out, 'Thy flesh hath grown upon thy spirit—the doors of thy soul are closed—hence! back to earth!' I made one more desperate effort, and called out, 'Edith! Edith!' but my voice went forth from me weak, like a voice in the distance. Nevertheless, my cry was answered. I heard Edith's voice within the garden calling out my name, but in very feeble tones. My ears were too grossly clogged with flesh to hear distinctly spiritual sounds. I was aware of Edith's presence. She shook the garden gate with her hands and spoke to me through the bars, but I saw no form. I heard only her voice.
"'Come to me,' she said, in what appeared a suppressed whisper. 'Oh, what is this, Charles? Why cannot you come?'
"Then the same unknown voice that had addressed me before spoke again, 'Spirit to spirit—flesh to flesh!' and I felt myself whirled back from the garden gate as by a whirlwind, and I awoke."
"The dream is strange," I observed. "Have you many such dreams?" I asked.