ted by damnable discord, asked
idly what had been that dream of which Pauline had spoken in her letter.
She was unwilling for a long while to tell him, but he, spurred on by
mischief itself, persuaded her in the end, and she recounted that
experience of waking to find herself prone upon the floor of her room.

"No wonder you're looking pale," he exclaimed. "Now you see the result
of exciting yourself unnecessarily."

"But it was so vivid," she protested, "and really the light was
blinding, and it thought so terribly all the time."

"I shall think very terribly that you've been reading some
spiritualistic rot in a novel," said Guy, "if you talk like that. Your
religion may be true, but I'm quite sure these conjuring tricks of your
fancy are a sign of hysteria. And this poor speck that was me? How did
you know it was me if it was a speck? Did that think, too? My foolish
Pauline, you encouraged your morbid ideas when you were awake, and when
you were asleep you paid the penalty."

She had gone away from him and was standing by the window.

"Guy, if you talk like that, it means you don't really love me. It means
you have no sympathy, that you're cold and cruel and cynical."

He sighed with elaborate compassion for her state of mind.

"And what else? I wonder how you ever managed to fall in love with me."

"Sometimes I wonder, too," she said, slowly.

He turned quickly and went out of the room.

Guy regretted before he was half-way down the passage what he had done,
but he steeled himself against going back by persuading himself that
Pauline's hysteria must be remorselessly checked. All the way back to
Plashers Mead he had excuses for his behavior, and all the way he was
wondering if he had done right. Supposing that she were to persist in
this exaggeration of everything, who could say into what extravagance of
attitude she might not find herself driven? Rage seized him against this
malady that was sapping the foundations of their love, and all his
affection for her was obscured in the contemplation of that overwrought
Pauline who sacrificed herself to baseless doubts and alarms. If he once
admitted her right to dream ridiculously about him, he would be
encouraging her upon the road to madness. Had she not already fondled
the notion of going mad, just as she would often fondle the picture of
himself as the heroine of an unhappy love-affair? If he were severe now,
she would surely come to see the absurdity of these