summer-house, did you wait a little on the path to the door before you
went in?"

I _had_ waited, surprised by my first view of the woman writing in my
book. Having answered her to this effect, I asked what she had done or
dreamed of doing at the later moment when I entered the summer-house.

"I did the strangest things," she said, in low, wondering tones. "If you
had been my brother, I could hardly have treated you more familiarly.
I beckoned to you to come to me. I even laid my hand on your bosom. I
spoke to you as I might have spoken to my oldest and dearest friend. I
said, 'Remember me. Come to me.' Oh, I was so ashamed of myself when
I came to my senses again, and recollected it. Was there ever such
familiarity--even in a dream--between a woman and a man whom she had
only once seen, and then as a perfect stranger?"

"Did you notice how long it was," I asked, "from the time when you lay
down on the bed to the time when you found yourself awake again?"

"I think I can tell you," she replied. "It was the dinner-time of the
house (as I said just now) when I went upstairs. Not long after I had
come to myself I heard a church clock strike the hour. Reckoning from
one time to the other, it must have been quite three hours from the time
when I first lay down to the time when I got up again."

Was the clew to the mysterious disappearance of the writing to be found
here?

Looking back by the light of later discoveries, I am inclined to think
that it was. In three hours the lines traced by the apparition of her
had vanished. In three hours she had come to herself, and had felt
ashamed of the familiar manner in which she had communicated with me in
her sleeping state. While she had trusted me in the trance--trusted me
because her spirit was then free to recognize my spirit--the writing had
remained on the page. When her waking will counteracted the influence of
her sleeping will, the writing disappeared. Is this the explanation? If
it is not, where is the explanation to be found?

We walked on until we reached that part of the Canongate street in which
she lodged. We stopped at the door.

CHAPTER XI. THE LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.

I LOOKED at the house. It was an inn, of no great size, but of
respectable appearance. If I was to be of any use to her that night, the
time had come to speak of other subjects than the subject of dreams.

"After all that you have told me," I said, "I will not ask you to admit
me any further