" She was blushing faintly, but she knew that he
would not look at her, and she was sitting in the shadow.

"On what day did you stop dreaming?" he asked, between two chords.

"It was last week. Let me see. It was a Wednesday. On Wednesday night I
did not dream." He nodded gravely over the keys, as if he had expected
the answer.

"Did you ever read anything about telepathy?" he asked. "I did not dream
of you on Wednesday night either. It seemed to me that I tried to find
you and could not."

"Were you trying to find me before?" Cecilia asked, as if it were the
most natural question in the world.

"Yes. In my dreams I almost always found you. There was a break--I
forget when. The old dream about the house of the Vestals stopped
suddenly. Then I missed you and tried to find you. You were always
sitting on that bench by the fountain in the villa. Last Wednesday I
dreamt I was there, but you did not come."

Cecilia shuddered, as if the night air from the open window chilled her.

"Are you cold?" he asked. "Shall I shut the window?"

"No, I was frightened," she answered. "We must never talk about all that
again. Do you know, I think it is wrong to talk about them. There is
some power of evil----"

"I do not deny the existence of the devil at all," Lamberti answered,
with a faint smile. "But I think this is only a strange case of
telepathy. I will do as you wish; though my own belief is, after this
evening, that it is better to talk about it all quite fearlessly, and
grow used to it. We shall be much less afraid of it if we look upon it
as something not at all supernatural, which could easily be explained if
we knew enough about those things."

"Perhaps," Cecilia answered doubtfully. "You may be right. I do not
know."

"You are going to marry my most intimate friend," Lamberti continued,
"and I am unfortunately condemned to stay in Rome for some time, for a
year, I fancy, and perhaps even longer."

"Why do you say that you are 'unfortunately condemned' to stay?"

"Because I did my best to get away. You look surprised. I begged the
Minister to shorten my leave and send me to sea at once, with or without
promotion. Instead, I was named a member of a commission which will sit
a long time. Since we are talking frankly, I wanted to get away from
you, and not to see you again for years. But now that I must stay here,
or leave the service, we cannot help meeting; so I think it is more
sensible not to take any solemn