These dreams were the one luxury of my life, being, as they were, the one means of escape from my life; reversing, as they did, the real truth of my life. Every night, when I lay down to sleep, I would think to myself: “'Perhaps to-night I shall dream of her. She will come to me in my dream.' These dreams always annihilated the recent past, and carried me back to our happy days. You were mine again, with me again. All was as it had been. My lost treasure was for a brief space restored to me. The great joy that I experienced in these dreams, I can not describe. It was boundless, unspeakable. Of course, to wake up in the morning, and realize that it had only been a dream, was hard. To wake up, and look around me, and see the walls of mv bedroom, the view from my window, and breathe the air, and listen to the sounds, of the morning, all quite unchanged, just as they had used to be in the old time; and then to think how completely all the rest was changed--changed beyond possibility of retrieval--you and your love lost to me forever--that was hard enough. It was like a famished man dreaming of food, and waking up to find a stone in his hand. And yet--and yet, so great was the rapture of them, while they lasted, my dreams were worth purchasing at almost any price; certainly, at the price of the pain of waking. To see you, to speak to you, to touch you; to be spoken to, and touched, by you; to hold your little, soft, warm hand in mine, to hear the music of your laughter, to breath the fragrance that the air caught from your presence, to gaze into the depths of your eyes, even though in a dream--it was better than nothing, wasn't it? Better than never, dreaming or waking, to see you at all. So, as I say, every night I would hope to dream of you--notwithstanding the thought that perhaps I had no right to dream of you, that you perhaps would begrudge me the possession of you, even in my dreams; but, as I say, my hope was rewarded very seldom--not oftener than once in every six or eight weeks. This was strange, seeing that you absorbed my mind constantly, all day long, every day.