misty whiteness. I glanced at her eyes ... and felt a pang of dread; in
those eyes something was astir--with the slow, continuous, malignant
movement of the benumbed snake, twisting and turning as the sun begins to
thaw it.

'Alice,' I cried, 'who are you? Tell me who you are.'

Alice simply shrugged her shoulders.

I felt angry ... I longed to punish her; and suddenly the idea occurred
to me to tell her to fly with me to Paris. 'That's the place for you to
be jealous,' I thought. 'Alice,' I said aloud, 'you are not afraid of big
towns--Paris, for instance?'

'No.'

'Not even those parts where it is as light as in the boulevards?'

'It is not the light of day.'

'Good; then take me at once to the Boulevard des Italiens.'

Alice wrapped the end of her long hanging sleeve about my head. I was at
once enfolded in a sort of white vapour full of the drowsy fragrance of the
poppy. Everything disappeared at once; every light, every sound, and almost
consciousness itself. Only the sense of being alive remained, and that was
not unpleasant.

Suddenly the vapour vanished; Alice took her sleeve from my head, and I
saw at my feet a huge mass of closely--packed buildings, brilliant light,