ct that no husband manages quite to retain in the face of
being contented. No, for love is an instant's fusing of shadow and
substance, fused for that instant only, whereafter the lover may harvest
pleasure from either alone, but hardly from these two united."

"Well," Manuel conceded, "all this may be true; but I never quite
understood hexameters, and so I could not ever see the good of talking
in them."

"I always do that, Manuel, when I am deeply affected. It is, I suppose,
the poetry in my nature welling to the surface the moment that
inhibitions are removed, for when I think about the impending severance
from my dear wife I more or less lose control of myself--You see, she
takes an active interest in my work, and that does not do with a
creative artist in any line. Oh, dear me, no, not for a moment!" says
Miramon, forlornly.

"But how can that be?" Niafer asked him.

"As all persons know, I design the dreams of men. Now Gisele asserts
that people have enough trouble in real life, without having to go to
sleep to look for it--"

"Certainly that is true," says Niafer.

"So she permits me only to design bright optimistic dreams and edifying
dreams and glad dreams. She says you must give tired persons what they
most need; and is emphatic about the importance of everybody's sleeping
in a wholesome atmosphere. So I have not been permitted to design a fine
nightmare or a creditable terror--nothing morbid or blood-freezing, no
sea-serpents or krakens or hippogriffs, nor anything that gives me a
really free hand,--for months and months: and my art suffers. Then, as
for other dreams, of a more roguish nature--"

"What sort of dreams can you be talking about, I wonder, Miramon?"

The magician described what he meant. "Such dreams also she has quite
forbidden," he added, with a sigh.

"I see," said Manuel: "and now I think of it, it is true that I have not
had a dream of that sort for quite a while."

"No man anywhere is allowed to have that sort of dream in these
degenerate nights, no man anywhere in the whole world. And here again my
art suffers, for my designs in this line were always especially vivid
and effective, and pleased the most rigid. Then, too, Gisele is always
doing and telling me things for my own good--In fine, my lads, my wife
takes such a flattering interest in all my concerns that the one way out
for any peace-loving magician was to contrive her rescue from my
clutches," said Miramon, fretfully.