Then suddenly down he slips, poor boy, and breaks both his legs below the knee on an iron rail, whereby he becomes a cripple for life. All this sad little tragedy of a New-year's Eve plays itself anew. The sympathetic crowd collects; Mimsey and Gogo weep; the heart-broken parents arrive, and the good little doctor Larcher; and Mary and I look on like criminals, so impossible it seems not to feel that we might have prevented it all! We two alone are alive and substantial in all this strange world of shadows, who seem, as far as we can hear and see, no less substantial and alive than ourselves. They exist for us; we do not exist for them. We exist for each other only, waking or sleeping; for even the people among whom our waking life is spent know hardly more of us, and what our real existence is, than poor little Andre Corbin, who has just broken his legs for us over again! [Illustration] And so, back to "Magna sed Apta," both saddened by this deplorable misadventure, to muse and talk and marvel over these wonders; penetrated to the very heart's core by a dim sense of some vast, mysterious power, latent in the sub-consciousness of man--unheard of, undreamed of as yet, but linking him with the Infinite and the Eternal. And how many things we always had to talk about besides! Heaven knows, I am not a brilliant conversationalist, but she was the most easily amusable person in the world--interested in everything that interested me, and I disdamaged myself (to use one of her Anglo-Gallicisms) of the sulky silence of years. Of her as a companion it is not for me to speak. It would be impertinent, and even ludicrous, for a person in my position to dilate on the social gifts of the famous Duchess of Towers. Incredible as it may appear, however, most of our conversation was about very common and earthly topics--her homes and refuges, the difficulties of their management, her eternal want of money, her many schemes and plans and experiments and failures and disenchantments--in all of which I naturally took a very warm interest. And then my jail, and all that occurred there--in all of which I became interested myself because it interested her so passionately; she knew every corner of it that I knew, every detail of the life there--the name, appearance, and history of almost every inmate, and criticised its internal economy with a practical knowledge of affairs; a business-like sagacity at which I never ceased to marvel. One of my drollest recollections is of a visit she paid there _in the flesh_, by some famous philanthropists of both sexes. I was interviewed by them all as the model prisoner, who, for his unorthodoxy, was a credit to the institution. She listened demurely to my intelligent answers when I was questioned as to my bodily health, etc., and asked whether I had any complaints to make. Complaints! Never was jail-bird so thoroughly satisfied with his nest--so healthy, so happy, so well-behaved. She took notes all the time.