. I see you now
lying on this couch but that is only the insensible phantom of the real
you that is in me. And it is the easier for me to feel this because that
image which others see and call by your name--how am I to know that it is
anything else but an enchanting mist? You have always eluded me except
in one or two moments which seem still more dream-like than the rest.
Since I came into this room you have done nothing to destroy my
conviction of your unreality apart from myself. You haven't offered me
your hand to touch. Is it because you suspect that apart from me you are
but a mere phantom, and that you fear to put it to the test?"

One of her hands was under the fur and the other under her cheek. She
made no sound. She didn't offer to stir. She didn't move her eyes, not
even after I had added after waiting for a while,

"Just what I expected. You are a cold illusion."

She smiled mysteriously, right away from me, straight at the fire, and
that was all.

CHAPTER VI

I had a momentary suspicion that I had said something stupid. Her smile
amongst many other things seemed to have meant that, too. And I answered
it with a certain resignation:

"Well, I don't know that you are so much mist. I remember once hanging
on to you like a drowning man . . . But perhaps I had better not speak of
this. It wasn't so very long ago, and you may . . . "

"I don't mind. Well . . ."

"Well, I have kept an impression of great solidity. I'll admit that. A
woman of granite."

"A doctor once told me that I was made to last for ever," she said.

"But essentially it's the same thing," I went on. "Granite, too, is
insensible."

I watched her profile against the pillow and there came on her face an
expression I knew well when with an indignation full of suppressed
laughter she used to throw at me the word "Imbecile." I expected it to
come, but it didn't come. I must say, though, that I was swimmy in my
head and now and then had a noise as of the sea in my ears, so I might
not have heard it. The woman of granite, built to last for ever,
continued to look at the glowing logs which made a sort of fiery ruin on
the white pile of ashes. "I will tell you how it is," I said. "When I
have you before my eyes there is such a projection of my whole being
towards you that I fail to see you distinctly. It was like that from the
beginning. I may say that I never saw you distinctly till after we had
parted and I t