"And is not the thing we call life one tissue of intangibilities?" asked the Russian. "You can touch neither the beginning nor the end of it. Do not its most cherished pleasures fly you even as you are in the very net of trying to grasp them? Do you know for certain that you--you yourself--are really here?--that you do not merely dream that you are here? What do you know?" "Your theories are too far-fetched for me," said Ducie. "A dream can be nothing more than itself--nothing can give it backbone or substance. To me such things are of no more value than the shadow I cast behind me when I walk in the sun." "And yet without substance there could be no shadow," snarled the Russian. "Do your experiences in any way resemble those recorded by De Quincey?" "They do and they do not," answered Platzoff. "I can often trace, or fancy that I can, a slight connecting likeness, arising probably from the fact that in the case of both of us a similar, or nearly similar agent was employed for a similar purpose. But, as a rule, the intellectual difference between any two men is sufficient to render their experiences in this respect utterly dissimilar." "It does not follow, I presume, that all the visions induced by the imbibition of opium, or what you term drashkil, are pleasant ones?" "By no means. You cannot have forgotten what De Quincey has to say on that score. But whether they are pleasant or the contrary, I accept them as so much experience, and in so far I am satisfied. You look incredulous, but I tell you, sir, that what I see, and what I undergo subjectively--while under the influence of drashkil, make up for me an experience as real, that dwells as vividly in my memory and that can be brought to mind like any other set of recollections, as if it were built up brick by brick, fact by fact, out of the incidents of everyday life. And all such experiences are valuable in this wise: that whatever I see while under the influence of drashkil, I see, as it were, with the eyes of genius. I breathe a keener atmosphere; I have finer intuitions; the brain is no longer clogged with that part of me which is mortal; in whatever imaginary scenes I assist, whether as actor or spectator matters not, I seem to discern the underlying meaning of things--I hear the low faint beating of the hidden pules of the world. To come back from this enchanted realm to the dull realities of everyday life is like depriving some hero of fairyland of his magic gifts and reducing him to the level of common humanity." "At which pleasant level I pray ever to be kept," said Ducie; "I have no desire to soar into those regions of romance where you seem so thoroughly at home."