Beyond these same amber satin curtains stood the tall bed with its canopy, as I could see; and here at the right was the same low Napoleon bed with its rolled ends.

The figures of the carpets were the same, their deep-piled richness, soft under foot, the same.

The flowered cups of the sconces were identical with those I had seen before.

To my eye, even as it grew more studious, there appeared no divergence, no difference, between these apartments and those I had so singularly visited--and yet under circumstances so strangely akin to these--in the capital of my own country! "You are good enough to admire my modest place," said a laughing voice at my shoulder.

Then indeed I waked and looked about me, and saw that this, stranger than any mirage of the brain, was but a fact and must later be explained by the laborious processes of the feeble reason.
I turned to her then, pulling myself together as best I could.