Do they shine much in the sun?'
'They quite dazzle me, Winnie,' I said, arching my hand above my
eyes, as if to protect them from the glare.
'Do you have a nice fire there when it's very cold?' she said.
'Yes, Winifred,' I said.
She then sank into silence, while I kept plying her with food.
After she had appeased her hunger she sat looking into the pool,
quite unconscious, apparently, of my presence by her side, and lost
in a reverie similar to that which I had seen at the cottage.
The form her dementia had taken was unlike anything that I had ever
conceived. Madness seemed too coarse a word to denote so wonderful
and fascinating a mental derangement. Mivart's comparison to a
musical-box recurred to me, and seemed most apt. She was in a waking
dream. The peril lay in breaking through that dream and bringing her
real life before her. There was a certain cogency of dreamland in all
she said and did. And I found that she sank into silent reverie
simply because she waited, like a person in sleep, for the current of
her thoughts to be directed and dictated by external phenomena.
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