The enchantment broke, and, shivering and very cold, he fell back into the world of familiar things, the room in the lodging house, with the fire out, and above his head, in the first floor front, lay Matilda, sleeping. He went up to her, and she lay with her hair back over her pillow and her hand under her cheek, and he said: "I will live to serve you. For my life is nothing except it go to sustain the wonder of yours." Old Mole was much astonished at this effort of his imagination, and later on wrote and rewrote it many times, but what he wrote was no more than the pale echo of what he had heard, the faded copy of what he had seen. When he came to analyze and diagnose his condition he concluded that the vivid impressions produced on his unexercised receptive mind had induced a kind of self-hypnotism in which he had been delivered up to the power of dreams subject peculiarly to the direction of his logical faculty. He could not remember having eaten anything that would account for it. IV TOYS _Worte! Worte! Keine Thaten! Niemals Fleisch, geliebte Puppe, Immer Geist und keinen Braten, Keine Knödel in der Suppe._ ROMANCERO IV TOYS WHEN the pantomime came to an end (as it did before a packed house, that cheered and cheered again and insisted on speeches from the comedians and the principal boy and the principal girl, and went on cheering regardless of last trains and trams and closing time) Matilda was told that, if she liked and if she had nothing better to do, she could return again next year. She declared her pleasure at the prospect, but inwardly determined to have something a great deal better to do. She had drawn blood from the public and was thirsting for more of it. Her condition was one with which Old Mole was destined to become familiar, but now he was distressed by her excitement, insisted that she was tired (she looked it), and decided on a holiday. She would only consent on condition that he allowed her to take singing lessons and would pay for them. Still harping on economy--for she could not get the extent and fertility of his means into her head--she pitched on Blackpool because she had a sort of cousin there who kept lodgings and would board them cheap. He tried to argue with her, and suggested London or Paris. But London had become to her the heaven to which all good "professionals" go, and Paris was very little this side of Hell for wickedness, and her three months in the theater had had the curious result of making her set great store by her estate as a married woman. To Blackpool they went and were withered by the March winds and half starved by Matilda's cousin, who despised them when she learned that they were play actors. They were miserable, and for misery no worse setting could be found than an empty pleasure city. They frequented the theater, and very quickly Matilda made friends with its permanent officials and arranged for her singing