yellow-white beard, his fumbling movements, the watchful girl, her colour, the steps, the cobbled pavement--were not imaginations of mine in any true sense, for while I was in a vacant mood my companion had been thinking of his home, and his brain was populous with quickened memories, and they invaded my own mind, and when I made question I found their origin.

But how many thousand times are we invaded by such images and there is no speculation over them?

Possibly I might have made use of such things in my art.

I might have made a tale about the old man and girl.

But if I had done so, if other characters had appeared in my tale who seemed just as living, where would they have come from?

Would I have again been drawing upon the reservoir of my companion's memories?

The vision of the girl and old man may in reality have been but a little part of the images with which my brain was flooded.

Did I then see all, or might not other images in the same series emerge at some later time and the connection be lost?

If I had written a tale and had imagined an inner room, an old mother.

An absent son, a family trouble, might I not all the while be still adventuring in another's life?