It must not be supposed that I adopted these conclusions with any sort of confidence. They entered my mind and remained there. But I received them churlishly and treated them as unwelcome guests. And the only reason that I did not expel them was because I could not discover, try as I would, any more substantial or sensible explanation of an event which they pretended to explain.
When the dawn broke and the light of day began to steal into the room between the shutters I looked around and shook my head. After all, had I fallen asleep against my will and dreamed the whole thing, as Weldon believed? It might be so. The intellect is a strange, elusive, shadowy affair. It slips from one's control at times. The memory easily clogs. The imagination is easily overheated. And one is not the best judge of one's own experiences. Science had taught me so much, at least, that one cannot always accept the evidence of sense. I began to doubt, to cast about me, and to vote myself absurd. With the rising of the sun, I flung back the shutters and looked forth on a vista of chimneys and leaded roofs. They were so manifestly real and solid and prosaic that all my brain expanded to a sense of ridicule except one small part, which began to shrivel up under the douche I poured upon it, of what I called cold common-sense. But it did not entirely shrivel up. It insisted on certain reservations. It said to me, "Pinsent, my man, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You have no right to ill-treat a part of your intelligence which--even though it may have erred--served you to the best of its ability. And can you be sure it erred? If it hap that it did not, you would never forgive yourself for flouting it. Be wise in time! Don't prejudge the case! Wait and watch! Take precautions! Guard yourself--and, above all, guard your charge!"
I determined to suspend judgment. Above all, I determined to guard my charge. But I confess it was with a curling lip I made the resolution. There is something in sunlight, some all-subduing power which irresistibly dries up the fountain springs of the imagination. I cannot conceive a novelist writing a fanciful story in the sunlight. Can you? And the sunlight was pouring into the room when I came to my resolve.