And this other human being and I had been enshrined in each other's memory for years--since childhood--and were now linked together by a tie so marvellous, an experience so unprecedented, that neither could ever well be out of the other's thoughts as long as life and sense and memory lasted. Her very self, as we talked to each other under the ash-tree at Cray, was less vividly present to me than that other and still dearer self of hers with whom I had walked up the avenue in that balmy dream atmosphere, where we had lived and moved and had our being together for a few short moments, yet each believing the other at the time to be a mere figment of his own (and her) sleeping imagination; such stuff as dreams are made of! And lo! it was all true--as true as the common experience of every-day life--more (ten times more), because through our keener and more exalted sense perceptions, and less divided attention, we were more conscious of each other's real inner being--linked closer together for a space--than two mortals had probably ever been since the world began. That clasp of the hands in the dream--how infinitely more it had conveyed of one to the other than even that sad farewell clasp at Cray! In my poor outer life I waited in vain for a letter; in vain I haunted the parks and streets--the street where she lived--in the hope of seeing her once more. The house was shut; she was away--in America, as I afterwards learned--with her husband and child. At night, in the familiar scenes I had learned so well to conjure up, I explored every nook and corner with the same yearning desire to find a trace of her. I was hardly ever away from "Parva sed Apta." There were Madame Seraskier and Mimsey and the major, and my mother and Gogo, at all times, in and out, and of course as unconscious of my solid presence as though I had never existed. And as I looked at Mimsey and her mother I wondered at my obtuseness in not recognizing at the very first glance who the Duchess of Towers had been, and whose daughter. The height, the voice, the eyes, certain tricks of gait and gesture--how could I have failed to know her again after such recent dream opportunities? And Seraskier, towering among them all, as his daughter now towered among women. I saw that he lived again in his daughter; _his_ was the smile that closed up the eyes, as hers did; had Mimsey ever smiled in those days, I should have known her again by this very characteristic trait.