The street was full of people--familiar forms and faces and voices,
chatting together and looking down the road after the yellow omnibus;
old attitudes, old tricks of gait and manner, old forgotten French ways
of speech--all as it was long ago. Nobody noticed us, and we walked up
the now deserted avenue.
The happiness, the enchantment of it all! Could it be that I was dead,
that I had died suddenly in my sleep, at the hotel in the Rue de la
Michodière! Could it be that the Duchess of Towers was dead too--had
been killed by some accident on her way from St. Cloud to Paris? and
that, both having died so near each other, we had begun our eternal
afterlife in this heavenly fashion?
That was too good to be true, I reflected; some instinct told me that
this was not death, but transcendent earthly life--and also, alas! that
it would not endure forever!
I was deeply conscious of every feature in her face, every movement of
her body, every detail of her dress--more so then I could have been in
actual life--and said to myself, "Whatever this is, it is no dream." But
I felt there was about me the unspeakable elation which can come to us
only in our waking moments when we are at our very best; and then only
feebly, in comparison with this, and to many of us never, ft never had
to me, since that morning when I had found the little wheelbarrow.
I was also conscious, however, that the avenue itself had a slight touch
of the dream in it. It was no longer quite right, and was getting out of
drawing and perspective, so to speak. I had lost my stay--the touch
of her hand.
"Are you still dreaming true, Mr. Ibbetson?"
"I am afraid not quite," I replied.
"You must try by yourself a little--try hard. Look at this house; what
is written on the portico?"