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"No doubt you have the better reason on your side, Edith," replied her husband, his manner very much subdued. "But it is difficult for me to unclasp my hand to let fall therefrom the natural good which I can see and estimate, for the seemingly unreal and unsubstantial good that, to your purer vision, looms up so imposingly." "Unreal unsubstantial Edward!" said Edith, in reply to this.
Yet he was still confused. He had been thrust upon the stage but he was uncertain of his cue. What was the meaning of this figure by his side? In his old part, she had not been there. When at last they were seated side by side in the car and the train began slowly to pull out, her presence there seemed even more unreal than ever. But soon he gave himself up comfortably to the illusion.
His heart swelled with a feeling for which he had no name, as he sat there, his back against a camel, staring out into the night, an unknown feeling in which joy was very deep and triumph was merged into a holy thankfulness. He had meant but forty winks, but it had been dark when his eyes closed and he opened them to the unreal half-lights of early dawn.
She linked an arm in Ellen's, and falling at once into her part of sober age, paced with her from the hall. Andrew, constrained in a way he hardly understood himself, was following them, but in their woman's community of silent understanding they took no notice of him. Outside, the night was soft and welcoming, unreal after the light and color, an enchanted wilderness of moonlight splendor.
But the more he thought upon the matter the less positive he was as to the verity of the seeming adventure through which he had passed, yet where the real had ceased and the unreal commenced he was quite unable to determine. Had he really then been to the village of the blacks at all, had he killed the old Gomangani, had he eaten of the elephant meat, had he been sick?
But the one great love in her possessed her so strongly that all other things were half unreal. She did her daily housework from sheer habit, and she studied because he had told her to do it, and because with the sweet, stubborn, credulous faith of her youth, she never doubted that he would return.
He sometimes felt that the history of the last few months was a dream from which he would probably wake up by falling heavily out of bed, so unreal did the events seem. One day, when he was at his wits' end, he saw in a newspaper an advertisement of a book entitled How to become a Successful Novelist, price half-a-crown.
It was both real and unreal, something better beckoned beyond all the time; but there was no hurry. It was a deep childhood mystery wonder filled them to the brim. "Come on, children; we'll be off now," sounded their uncle's voice, and at the same moment Come-Back Stumper joined them. He had been counting over the money with the clergyman, of course, all this time. He was very slow.
We have here, in my opinion, one of the most remarkable indications of the mental state of crowds, and especially of the facility with which they are suggestioned. The unreal has almost as much influence on them as the real. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two. The power of conquerors and the strength of States is based on the popular imagination.
Since then he had journeyed alone. He had made a hundred new friends, had been welcomed in a hundred historic houses. Wherever he had passed, he had left enthusiasm behind him and he knew it. He had grown accustomed to his own power, and yet its renewed evidence was a surprise to him every day. There was something unreal in it.
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