way from me?" Lamberti asked.

"I was frightened. I was frightened to-day when you spoke to me. Why did
you go to the Forum that morning?"

"I had dreamt something strange about you. It happened just where I
found you."

"I dreamt the same dream, the same night. That is, I think it must have
been the same."

She turned her face away, blushing red.

He saw, and understood.

"Yes," he said. "What am I to tell d'Este?" he asked, after a short
pause.

"Nothing!" said Cecilia quickly, and the subsiding blush rose again.
"Besides," she continued, speaking rapidly in her embarrassment, "he
would not believe us, whatever we told him, and it is of no use to let
him know----" she stopped suddenly.

"Has he no right to know?"

"No. At least--no--I think not. I do not mean----"

They were standing still, facing each other. In another moment she would
be telling Lamberti what she had never told Guido about her feelings
towards him. On a sudden she turned away with a sort of desperate
movement, clasping her hands and looking over the low wall.

"Oh, what is it all?" she cried, in great distress. "I am in the dream
again, talking as if I had known you all my life! What must you think of
me?"

Lamberti stood beside her, resting his hands upon the wall.

"It is exactly what I feel," he said quietly.

"Then you dream, too?" she asked.

"Every night--of you."

"We are both dreaming now! I am sure of it. I shall wake up in the dark
and hear the door shut softly, though I always lock it now."

"The door? Do you hear that, too?" asked Lamberti. "But I am wide awake
when I hear it."

"So am I! Sometimes I can manage to turn up the electric light before
the sound has quite stopped. Are we both mad? What is it? In the name of
Heaven, what is it all?"

"I wish I knew. Whatever it is, if you and I meet often, it is quite
impossible that we should talk like ordinary acquaintances. Yes, I
thought I was going mad, and this morning I went to a great doctor and
told him everything. He seemed to think it was all a set of
coincidences. He advised me to see you and ask you why you ran away that
day, and he thought that if we talked about it, I might perhaps not
dream again."

"You are not mad, you are not mad!" Cecilia repeated the words in a low
voice, almost mechanically.

Then there was silence, and presently she turned from the wall and began
to walk back along the wide path that passed by the central fountain.
The sun,