There followed that smooth rush into gulfs of sleep that provides
perhaps the most exquisite physical sensation known to man, as the
veils fall thicker and softer every instant, and the consciousness
gathers itself inwards from hands and feet and limbs, like a dog
curling himself up for rest; yet retains itself in continuous being,
and is able to regard its own comfort. All this he remembered
perfectly half an hour later; but there followed in his memory that
inevitable gap in which self loses itself before emerging into the
phantom land of dreams, or returning to reality.
But that into which he emerged, he remembered afterwards, was a
different realm altogether from that which is usual--from that country
of grotesque fancy and jumbled thoughts, of thin shadows of truth and
echoes from the common world where most of us find ourselves in sleep.