Attenuated by the influence of these bodiless fancies, the palpable shapes of Mattie and Olwen seemed to thin themselves out into something more filmy than the stuff of dreams. Mechanically he responded to Olwen’s intense preoccupations, mechanically he smiled at his sister across the little girl’s flushed face. But he felt that his senses were no longer available, no longer to be trusted. He had slid away somehow into some level of existence where human vision and human contact meant nothing at all. It was as if these two girls had become as unreal as his own intangible thoughts⁠—those thoughts like tiny twilight insects⁠—which passed without leaving a trace!

“No! Didn’t you hear me telling you? That’s not Gipsy⁠ ⁠… that’s Antoinette!” scolded the little girl, as she snatched a miniature pillow from under one waxen head to insert it violently beneath another.

“Dolls⁠—dolls⁠—dolls!” thought Wolf. “If we can slip out of reality, why can’t they slip into it?” He began automatically swinging both Gipsy and Antoinette from one hand to the other, a proceeding which delighted their little mistress.