blows did little or no damage to those unearthly assailants, but they
shrank back, teetering and dancing, to a safe distance. Again I had the
sense that they were laughing, mocking. For the moment I had beaten them
off, but they were sure of me in the end. Just then my groping free hand
pressed a switch. The entry sprang into light.

On the instant they were not there.

* * * * *

Somebody was knocking outside, and with trembling fingers I turned the
knob of the door. In came a tall, slender girl with a blue lounging-robe
caught hurriedly around her. Her bright hair was disordered as though
she had just sprung from her bed.

"Is someone sick?" she asked in a breathless voice. "I live down the
hall--I heard cries." Her round blue eyes were studying my face, which
must have been ghastly pale. "You see, I'm a trained nurse, and
perhaps----"

"Thank God you did come!" I broke in, unceremoniously but honestly, and
went before her to turn on every lamp in the parlor.

It was she who, without guidance, searched out my whisky and siphon and
mixed for me a highball of grateful strength. My teeth rang nervously on
the edge of the glass as I gulped it down. After that I got my own
robe--a becoming one, with satin facings--and sat with her on the divan
to tell of my adventure. When I had finished, she gazed long at the
painting of the dancers, then back at me. Her eyes, like two chips of
the April sky, were full of concern and she held her rosy lower lip
between her teeth. I thought that she was wonderfully pretty.

"What a perfectly terrible nightmare!" she said.

"It was no nightmare," I protested.

She smiled and argued the point, telling me all manner of comforting
things about mental associations and their reflections in vivid dreams.

To clinch her point she turned to the painting.

"This line about a 'living picture' is the peg on which your slumbering
mind hung the whole fabric," she suggested, her slender fingertip
touching the painted scribble. "Your very literal subconscious self
didn't understand that the artist meant his picture would live only
figuratively."

"Are you sure that's what the artist meant?" I asked, but finally I let
her convince me. One can imagine how badly I wanted to be convinced.

She mixed me another highball, and a short one for herself. Over it she
told me her name--Miss Dolby--and finally she left me with a last
comforting assurance. But, nightmare