“I don’t believe,” she went on, “that even Miss Lingard has more of the blessed sense of freedom and strength and motion when she is on horseback than I have when I am asleep. The very winds of my dreams will make me so unspeakabably happy that I wake weeping. Do not tell me it is gone then, for I continue so happy that I can hardly get to sleep again to hunt for more joy. Don’t say it is an unreality--for where does freedom lie? In the body or in the mind? What does it matter whether my body be lying still or moving from one spot of space to another? What is the good of motion but to produce the feeling of freedom? The feeling is everything, and if I have it, that is all that I want. Bodily motion would indeed disturb it for me--lay fetters on my spirit.--Sometimes, again, I dream of a new flower--one never before beheld by mortal eye--with some strange, wonderful quality in it, perhaps, that makes it a treasure, like that flower of Milton’s invention--haemony--in Comus, you know. But one curious thing is that that strange quality will never be recalled in waking hours; so that what it was I can never tell--as if it belonged to other regions than the life of this world: I retain only the vaguest memory of its power, and marvel, and preciousness.--Sometimes it is a little poem or a song I dream of, or some strange musical instrument, perhaps like one of those I have seen angels with in a photograph from an old picture. And somehow with the instrument always comes the knowledge of how to play upon it. So you see, sir, as it has pleased God to send me into the world as crooked as a crab, and nearly as lame as a seal, it has pleased him also to give me the health and riches of the night to strengthen me for the pains and poverties of the day.--You rejoice in a beautiful thought when it comes to you, Mr. Wingfold--do you not?” “When it comes to me,” answered Wingfold significantly--almost petulantly. Could it be that he envied the dwarf-girl? “Then is the thought any worse because it comes in a shape?--or is the feeling less of a feeling that it is born in a dream?” “I need no convincing, I admit all you say,” returned Wingfold. “Why are you so silent, then? You make me think you are objecting inside to everything I am saying,” rejoined Rachel with a smile. “Partly because I fear you are exciting yourself too much and will suffer in consequence,” answered the curate, who had noted the rosy flush on her face. The same moment her uncle re-entered the room. “I have been trying to convince Mr. Wingfold that there MAY be some good in dreaming, uncle,” she said. “Successfully?” asked Polwarth. “Unnecessarily,” interjected Wingfold. “I required for conviction only the facts. Why should I suppose that, if there be a God, he is driven out of us by sleep?”