i tried to feel his brow and take his temperature assuming that he was in the grip of some delusionary fever , but he pushed my hand away and bade me sit next to him and listen , while he tried to make sense of his own nocturnal vision : i think that he was conscious even then what an important moment this was for him and that unless he assembled his dreams into rational thought there and then , the one chance he had to give his life some meaning might be lost forever to a world of half-remembered ideas and ambitions .