ing, Dr. Andrews said, "You
started having the dream more often just after you told Paul you
wouldn't marry him, is that right?"

"No. It was the other way around. I hadn't had it for months, not
since I fell in love with him, then he got assigned to that "Which
Tomorrow?" show and he started calling me "Lucky," the way everybody
does, and the dream came back...." She stopped short, and turned on
the couch to stare at the psychiatrist with startled eyes. "But that
can't be how it was," she said. "The lonesomeness must have started
after I decided not to marry him, not before."

"I wonder why the dream stopped when you fell in love with him."

"That's easy," Lucilla said promptly, grasping at the chance to evade
her own more disturbing question. "I felt close to him, whether he was
with me or not, the way I used to feel close to people back when I was
a little girl, before ... well, before that day in the mountains ...
when Mother said...."

"That was when you started having the dream, wasn't it?"

"How'd you know? I didn't--not until just now. But, yes, that's when
it started. I'd never minded the dark or being alone, but I was
frightened when Mother shut the door that night, because the walls
seemed so ... so solid, now that I knew all the thoughts I used to
think were with me there were just pretend. When I finally went to
sleep, I dreamed, and I went on having the same dream, night after
night after night, until finally they called a doctor and he gave me
something to make me sleep."

"I wish they'd called me," Dr. Andrews said.

"What could you have done? The sleeping pills worked, anyway, and
after a while I didn't need them any more, because I'd heard other
kids talking about having hunches and lucky streaks and I stopped
feeling different from the rest of them, except once in a while, when
I was so lucky it ... bothered me."

"And after you met Paul, you stopped being ... too lucky ... and the
dream stopped?"

"No!" Lucilla was startled at her own vehemence. "No, it wasn't like
that at all, and you'd know it, if you'd been listening. With Paul, I
felt close to him all the time, no matter how many miles or walls or
anything else there were between us. We hardly had to talk at all,
because we seemed to know just what the other one was thinking all the
time, listening to music, or watching the waves pound in or just
working together at the office. Instead of feeling ... odd ... when I
knew what he was th