She was the virtual mistress of a home for fallen women, a reformatory for juvenile thieves, and a children's convalescent hospital--to all of which she gave her immediate personal superintendence, and almost every penny she had. She had let her house in Hampshire, and lived with a couple of female servants in a small furnished house on Campden Hill. She did without a carriage, and went about in cabs and omnibuses, dressed like a daily governess, though nobody could appear more regally magnificent than she did when we were together. She still kept her name and title, as a potent weapon of influence on behalf of her charities, and wielded it mercilessly in her constant raid on the purse of the benevolent Philistine, who is fond of great people. All of which gave rise to much comment that did not affect her equanimity in the least. She also attended lectures, committees, boards, and councils; opened bazaars and soup kitchens and coffee taverns, etc. The list of her self-imposed tasks was endless. Thus her outer life was filled to overflowing, and, unlike mine, every hour of it was worth record--as I well know, who have witnessed it all. But this is not the place in which to write the outer life of the Duchess of Towers; another hand has done that, as everybody knows. Every page henceforward must be sacred to Mary Seraskier, the "fee Tarapatapoum" of "Magna sed Apta" (for so we had called the new home and palace of art she had added on to "Parva sed Apta," the home of her childhood). To return thither, where we left her lying unconscious. Soon the color would come back to her cheeks, the breath to her nostrils, the pulse to her heart, and she would wake to her Eden, as she called it--our common inner life--that we might spend it in each other's company for the next eight hours. Pending this happy moment, I would make coffee (such coffee!), and smoke a cigarette or two; and to fully appreciate the bliss of _that_ one must be an habitual smoker who lives his real life in an English jail. When she awoke from her sixteen hours' busy trance in the outer world, such a choice of pleasures lay before us as no other mortal has ever known. She had been all her life a great traveller, and had dwelt in many lands and cities, and seen more of life and the world and nature than most people. I had but to take her hand, and one of us had but to wish, and, lo! wherever either of us had been, whatever either of us had seen or heard or felt, or even eaten or drunk, there it was all over again to choose from, with the other to share in it--such a hypnotism of ourselves and each other as was never dreamed of before. Everything was as life-like, as real to us both, as it had been to either at the actual time of its occurrence, with an added freshness and charm that never belonged to mortal existence. It was no dream; it was a second life, a better land.