s and bullets swept all around me, cut through my
dress, through my hair, but did not harm me."

"Tell me a little more about it, just quietly. How did you happen to go
out there? Was it because you heard that Captain Herrick was wounded?
That's the way the papers cabled the story. Was that true?" Then, seeing
her face darken, he added: "Perhaps I ought not to ask that question?"

"Oh, yes, I want you to. I want you to know everything about
me--everything. That's why I am here. Captain Herrick says you are a
great specialist in nervous troubles, and I have a feeling that unless
you can help me nobody can."

"Well, I have helped some people who felt pretty blue about
life--perhaps I can help you. Now, then, what is the immediate trouble?
Any aches or pains? I must say you seem to be in splendid health," he
smiled at her with cheery admiration.

"It isn't my body. I have no physical suffering. I eat well enough, I
sleep well, except--my dreams. I have horrible, torturing dreams,
doctor. I'm afraid to go to sleep. I have the same dreams over and over
again, especially two dreams that haunt me."

"How long have you had these dreams?"

"Ever since I went out that dreadful day from Montidier--when the
Germans almost broke through. They told me Captain Herrick was lying
there helpless, out beyond our lines. So I went to him. I don't know how
I got there, but--I found him. He was wounded in the thigh and a German
beast was standing over him when I came up. He was going to run him
through with a bayonet. And somehow, I--I don't know how I did it, but
I caught up a pistol from a dead soldier and I shot the German."

"Good Lord! You don't say! They didn't have that in the papers! What a
woman! No wonder you've had bad dreams!"

Penelope passed a slender hand over her eyes as if to brush away evil
memories, then she said wearily: "It isn't that, they are not ordinary
dreams."

"Well, what kind of dreams are they? You say there are two dreams?"

"There are two that I have had over and over again, but there are
others, all part of a sequence with the same person in them."

The doctor looked at her sharply. "The same person? A person that you
recognize?"

"Yes."

"A person you have really seen? A man?"

"Yes, the man I killed."

"Oh!"

"I told you he was a beast. I saw that in his face, but I _know_ it now
because I dream of things that he did as a conqueror--in the villages."

"I see--brutal things?"

"Worse t